.\''J 



ANEW 



SPIRIT OF THE AGE. 



EDITED BY R. H. HORNE, 



AUTHOR OF "ORION/' "GREGORY VII.," &C., &C. 



"It is an easy thing to praise or blame ; 
The hard task, and the virtue, to do both." 



NEW-YORK: 
Harper & Brothers, 82 C l i f f-s t. 



1844. 



T^ 4-6 1 

.Hi 



finscribeU 



JAMES F. FERRIER, ESQ., 

PROFESSOR OF UNIVERSAL HISTORY IN THE UNIVERSITY OF EDINBURGH, 

A SLIGHT TOKEN OF GRATITUDE FOR CANDID CRITICISM, 
AND OF RESPECT FOR ENLIGHTENED ERUDITION. 



London, October I2th, 1843 



PREFACE. 



Nearly twenty years have now elapsed since 
the pubhcation of Hazlitt's " Spirit of the Age," 
and a new set of men, several of them animated 
by a new spirit, have obtained eminent positions 
in the public mind. 

Of those selected by Hazlitt, three are intro- 
duced in the present publication, and two also of 
those who appeared in the '* Authors of England," 
for reasons which will be appaFent in the papers 
relating to them. With these exceptions, our se- 
lection has not been made from those who are 
already " crowned," and their claims settled, but 
almost entirely from those who are in progress 
and midway of fame. 

It has been throughout a matter of deep regret 
to the editor, more keenly felt as the work drew 
towards its conclusion, that he found himself com- 
pelled to omit several names which should have 
been included ; not merely of authors who, like 
himself, belong only to the last ten or fifteen years, 
but of veterans in the field of literature, who have 
not been duly estimated in collections of this kind. 
Inability to find sufficient space is one of the chief 
causes ; in some cases, however, the omission is 
attributable to a difficulty of classification, or the 
perplexity induced by a versatility of talents in the 
same individual. In some cases, also, names hon- 
oured in literature could not be introduced with- 
out entering into the discussion of questions of a 
nature not well suited to a work of this kind — or, 
rather, to this division of a possible series — yet 



IV PREFACE. 

with which great questions their names are iden- 
tified. 

The selection, therefore, which it has been 
thought most advisable to adopt, has been the 
names of those most eminent in general literature, 
and representing most extensively the Spirit of 
the Age ; and the names of two individuals, who, 
in this work, represent those philanthropic prin- 
ciples now influencing the minds and moral feel- 
ings of all the first intellects of the time. Suflicient 
cause will be apparent in the respective articles 
for the one or two other exceptions. 

For most of the omissions, however, one rem- 
edy alone remains. The present work, though 
complete in itself, forms only the inaugural part 
of a projected series, the continuation of which 
will probably depend upon the reception of this 
first main division, which, in any case, may be re- 
garded as the centre of the whole. 

Should the design of the projectors be fully car- 
ried out, it will comprise the " Political Spirit of 
the Age," in which, of course, the leading men of 
all parties will be included ; the " Scientific Spirit 
of the Age," including those who most conspic- 
uously represent the strikingly opposite classes of 
discovery or development, &c. ; the "Artistical 
Spirit of the Age," including the principal painters, 
sculptors, musical composers, architects, and en- 
gravers of the time, with such reference to the 
theatres and concert-rooms as may be deemed 
necessary; and the "Historical, Biographical, and 
Critical Spirit of the Age." 

But more than all, the editor regrets that he 
could afford no sufficient space for an examina- 
tion of the books for children, which must be re- 
garded as exercising so great and lasting an influ- 
ence upon the mind and future life. He is well 



PREFACE. V 

assured, while admiring a few excellent works 
like those of Mrs. Marcet and Mary Howitt, that 
there are innumerable books for children, the sale 
of which is enormous, as the influence of them is 
of the most injurious character. But this could 
only be appropriately dealt with under the head 
of Education. 

It will readily be understood that the present 
volume refers simply to our own country, and 
(with one exception) to those now living. In the 
biographical sketches, which are only occasional, 
the editor has carefully excluded all disagreeable 
personalities, and all unwarrantable anecdotes. 
The criticisms are entirely on abstract grounds. 

There is one peculiarity in the critical opin- 
ions expressed in this volume : it is that they are 
never balanced and equivocal, or evasive of de- 
cision on the whole. Where the writer doubts 
his own judgment, he says so ; but in all cases, 
the reader will never be in doubt as to what the 
critic really means to say. The editor, before 
commencing this labour, confesses to the weak- 
ness of having deliberated with himself a good 
half hour as to whether he should " try to please 
everybody ;" but the result was that he deter- 
mined to try and please one person only. It may 
seem a bad thing to acknowledge, but that one 
was " himself" The pleasure he expected to de- 
rive, was from the conviction of having fully spo- 
ken out what he felt to be the Truth ; and in the 
pleasure of this consciousness he is not disappoint- 
ed. His chief anxiety now is (and more partic- 
ularly, of course, with respect to those articles 
which have been writen by himself), that the read- 
er should never mistake the self-confidence of the 
critic for arrogance, or the presumptuous tone of 
assumed superiority, which are so revoltincr ; but 
A2 



VI PREFACE. 

solely attribute it to his strong feelino: of convic- 
tion, and a belief that he clearly sees the truth of 
the matter in question. There is no other feeling 
in it. He may be often wrong, but it is with a 
clear conscience. 

The editor having contributed to several quar- 
terly journals during the last seven or eight years, 
has transferred a few passages into the pages of 
this work concerning writers whose peculiar ge- 
nius he had exclusive leisure to study some time 
since, and has been unwilling to say the same 
things in other words. But these passages occur 
in two articles only. 

For valuable assistance and advice from several 
eminent individuals, the editor begs to return his 
grateful thanks. It will be sufficiently apparent 
that several hands are in the work. 

R. H. H. 



CONTENTS. 



Page 

1. Cileries Dickens , • .9 

f. Lord Ashley and Dr. Southwood Smith . 53 

3. Thomas Ingoldsby 81 

4. Walter Savage Landor 94 • 

5. William and Mary Howitt 109 

6. Dr. Pusey 120 

7. G. P. R. James, Mrs. Gore, Capt. Marryatt, and Mrs. TroUope 127 

8. T. N. Talfourd 145 

9- R. M. Milnes and Hartley Coleridge 154 

10. Sydney Smith, A. Fonblanque, and D. Jerrold . . . 162. 

11. William Wordsworth and Leigh Hunt 177 

12. Alfred Tennyson ... 193 

13. T. B. Macanlay 211 

14. Thomas Hood and the late Theodore Hook . . . .221 

15. Harriet Martineau and Mrs. Jameson 22T 

16. Sheridan Knowles and William Macready .... 238 

17. Miss E. B. Barrett and Mrs. Norton 265 

18. Banim and the Irish Novelists 271 

19. Robert Browning and J. W. Marston 278 

20. Sir Edward Lyttou Bulwer 297 

21. William Harrison Ainsworth 313 

22. Mrs. Shelley 317 

23. Robert Montgomery . . 322 

24. Thomas Carlyle 333 

25. Henry Taylor and the Author of "Festus" . . . .349' 

A2 



I 



CHARLES DICKENS. 

" One touch of Nature mukes the wliole world kin." 

" Hunger does not preside over this day," replied the Cook, " thanks be to 
Camacho the Rich. Alight, and see it thou canst find anywhere a ladle, and 
fikini out a fowl ur two, and much good may it do thy good heart." "7 see 
none .'" answered Sancho. " Stay," quoth ihe Cook. " God forgive me, what 
a nice and good-for-nothing fellow must you be !" So saying, he laid hold of 
a keitle, and sousing it at (nice into one of the half jar-pots, he fished out three 

pullets and a couple of geese "I have nothing to put it in I" answered 

Sancho. " Then take ladle and all," replied the Cook, " for Camacho's rich- 
es and felicity are sufficient to supply everything." — Don Quixote, Part ii. 
Book 11. Cap. 3. 

If an extensive experience and knowledge of the 
world be certain in most cases to render a man suspi- 
cious, full of doubts and incredulities, equally certain is 
it thot with other men such experience and such knowl- 
edge exercise this influence at rare intervals only, or in 
a far less degree ; while in some respects the influence 
even acts in a directly opposite way, and the extraor- 
dinary things they have seen or suffered, cause them to 
be very credulous and of open-armed faith to embrace 
strange novelties. They are not startled at the sound 
of frt sh wonders in the moral or physical world— they 
laugh at no feasible theory, and can see truth through 
the refractions of paradox and contradictory extremes. 
They know that there are more things in heaven and on 
the earth than in " your philosophy." They observe 
the fables and the visions of one age, become the facts 
and practices of a succeeding age — perhap-s even of a 
few years after their first announcement, and before the 
world has done laughing : they are slow to declare any 
character or action to be unnatural, having so often wit-: 
nessed some of the extreme lights and shadows which 
flit upon the outskirts of Nature's capacious circle, and 
have perhaps themselves been made to feel the bitter 
reality of various classes of anomaly previously unac- 
countable, if not incredible. They have discovered that 
in matters of practical conduct a greater blunder can- 
not in general be made, than to "judge of others by 
yourself," or what you think, feel, and fancy of yourself. 
But having found out that the world is not " all alike,'* 
though like enough for the charities of real life, they 



10 CHARLES DICKENS. 

identify themselves with other individualities, then 
search within for every actual and imaginary resem- 
blance to the great majority of their fellow-creatures, 
■which may give them a more intimate knowledge of 
aggregate nature, and thus enlarge the bounds of unex- 
clusive sympathy. 

To men of this genial habit and maturity of mind, if 
also they have an observing eye for externals, there is 
usually a very tardy admission- of the alleged madness 
of a picture of scenery, or the supposed grossness of 
a caricature of the human countenance. The traveller 
and the voyager, who has, moreover, an eye for art, has 
often seen enough to convince him that the genius of 
Turner and Martin has its foundation not only in ele- 
mental but in actual truth; nor could .such an observer 
go into any large concourse of people (especially of the 
poorer classes, where the unsuppressed character has 
been suffered to rise completely to the surface) without 
seeing several faces, v\^hich, by the addition of the vices 
of social man, might cause many a dumb animal to feel 
indignant at the undoubtedly deteriorated resemblance. 
The curse of evil circumstances acting upon the " third 
and fourth generations," when added to the " sins of 
the fathers," can and does turn the lost face of humani- 
ty into something worse than brutish. As with the face, 
so is it with the character of mankind ; nothing can be 
too lofty, too noble, too lovely to be natural ; nor can 
anything be too vicious, too brutalized, too mean, or too 
ridiculous. It is observable, however, that there are 
many degrees and fine shades in these frequent degra- 
dations of man to the mere animal. Occasionally they 
are no degradation, but rather an advantage, as a falcon 
eye, or a lion-brow, will strikingly attest. But more 
generally the effect is either gravely humorous, or gro- 
tesquely comic ; and in these cases the dumb original 
is not complimented. For, you may see a man with 
a bull's forehead and neck, and a mean grovelling coun- 
tenance (while that of the bull is physically grand and 
high-purposed), and the dog, the sheep, the bird, and 
the ape in all their varieties, are often seen with such 
admixtures as are really no advantage. Several times 
in an individual's life he may meet in the actual world 
■with most of the best and worst kind of faces and char- 
acters of the world of fiction. It is true that there are 
not to be found a whole tribe of Quilps and Quasimodos, 



CHARLES DICKENS. II 

(you would not wish it 1) but once in the life of the stu- 
dent of character he may have a glimpse of just such a 
creature ; and that, methinks, were quite familiar proof 
enough both for nature and art. Those who have ex- 
clusively portrayed the pure ideal in grandeur or beauty, 
and those also who have exclusively, or chiefly, por- 
trayed monstrosities and absurdities, have been recluse 
men, who drew with an inward eye, and copied from 
their imaginations : the men who have given us the lar- 
gest amount of truth under the greatest variety of 
forms, have always been those who went abroad into 
the world in all its ways ; and in the works of such men 
•will always be found those touches of nature which can 
only be copied at first-hand, and the extremes of which 
originalities are never unnaturally exceeded. There are 
no caricatures in the portraits of Hogarth, nor are there 
any in those of Dickens, The most striking thing in 
both, is their apparently inexhaustible variety and truth 
of character. 

Charles Lamb, in his mast3rly essay " On the Genius 
of Hogarth," says, that in the print of the " Election 
Dinner," there are more than thirty distinct classes of 
face, all in one room, and disposed in a natural manner, 
and all partaking in the spirit of the scene. The up- 
ror.rious fun and comic disasters in the picture of" Chair- 
ing the Member ;" the fantastic glee and revelries of 
" Southwark Fair ;" the irony and farcical confusion of the 
" March to Finchley ;" the ludicrous and voluble pertina- 
cities of the " Enraged Musician ;" and the rich humours 
of " Beer Street," in every one, and every part of which 
pictures, there is character and characteristic thought 
or action, are well known to all the numerous class of 
Hogarth's admirers. How very like they are to many 
scenes in the works of Dickens, not substantially nor 
in particular details, but in moral purpose and finished 
execution of parts, and of the whole, must surely have 
been often observed. The resemblance is apparent 
with regard to single figures and to separate groups — 
all with different objects, and often in conflict with the 
rest — and equally apparent with relation to one distinct 
and never-to-be-mistaken whole into which the various 
figures and groups are fused, and over which one gen- 
eral and harmonizing atmosphere expands, not by any 
apparent intention in the skilful hand of the artist, but 
as if exhaled from and sustained by the natural vitality 
of the scene. 



12 CHARLES DICKENS. 

But the comic humour for which these two great 
masters of character are most popularly known, con- 
stitutes a part only of their genius, and certainly not 
the highest part. Both possess tragic power — not at 
all in the ideal world, nor yet to be regarded as mere 
harsh, unredeemed matter-of-fact reality — but of the 
profoundest order. Mingled with their graphic tenden- 
cies to portray absurdity and ugliness, both display a 
love for tlie beautiful, and the pathetic. In the latter 
respect more especially, Mr. Dickens greatly excels ; 
and two or three of his scenes, and numerous incidental 
touches, have never been surpassed, if the heart-felt 
tears of tens of thousands of readers are any test of 
natural pathos. But although their tragic power is 
so great, it is curious to observe that neither Hogarth 
nor Dickens has ever portrayed a tragic character, in 
the higher or more essentii^l sense of the term. The 
individual whose bounding emotions and tone of thought 
are in an habitual state of passionate elevation, and 
whose aims and objects, if actually attainable, are still, 
to a great extent, idealized by the glowing atmosphere 
of his imagination, and a high-charged temperament — 
such a character, which is always ready to meet a tra- 
gic result half-way, if not to produce it, finds no place 
in the works of either. In their works no one dies for a 
noble purpose, nor for an abstract passion. There is no 
walking to execution, or to a premature grave by any 
other means, with a lofty air of conscious right, and for 
some great soul-felt truth— no apprehension for a capi- 
tal crime in which there is a noble bearing or exulta- 
tion — no death-bed of greatness in resignation and con- 
tentment for the cause — for there is no great cause at 
stake. Their tragedy is the constant tragedy of private 
life — especially with the poorer classes. They choose 
a man or woman for this purpose, with sufficient 
strength of body and will, and for the most part vicious 
and depraved ; they place them in just the right sort of 
desperate circumstances which will ripen their previ- 
ous character to its disastrous end ; and they then leave 
the practical forces of nature and society to finish the 
story. Most truly, and fearfully, and morally, is it all 
done — or, rather, it all seems to happen, and we read it 
as a fac-simile, or a most faithful chronicle. Their 
heroes are without any tragic principle or purpose in 
themselves; they never tempt their fate or run upon 



CHARLES DICKENS. 13 

-destruction, but rush away from it, evade, dodge, hide, 
fight, wrestle, tear and scream at it as a downright hor- 
ror, and finally die because they absolutely cannot help 
it. This is shown or implied in most of the violent 
deaths which- occur in the works of these two inventive 
geniuses. 

The tragic force, and deep moral warnings, contained 
in several of the finest works of Hogarth, have been 
fully recognized by a few great writers, but are not yet 
recognized sufficiently by the popular sense. But even 
some of his pictures, which are deservedly among the 
least popular, from the revolting nature of their subject 
or treatment, do yet, for the most part, contain mani- 
festations of his great genius. Of this class are the 
pictures on the " Progress of Cruelty :" but who will 
deny the terrific truth of the last but one of the series'? 
The cruel boy, grown up to cruel manhood, has mur- 
dered his mistress, apparently to avoid the trouble at- 
tending her being about to become a mother He has 
■cut her throat at night in a church-yard, and seeming 
to have become suddenly paralysed at the completeness 
of his own deed, which he was too brutally stupid to 
comprehend till it was really done, two watchmen have 
arrested him. There lies his victim — motionless, ex- 
tinct, quite passed away out of the scene, out of the 
world. Her white visage is a mere wan case that has 
opened, and the soul has utterly left it. No remains 
even of bodily pain are traceable, but rather in its va- 
cuity a suggestion that the last nervous consciousness 
was a kind of contentment that her life of misery should 
be ended. The graves, the tombstones, the old church 
walls are alive and ejaculatory with horror — the man 
alone stands petrific. There is no bold Turpin, or Jack 
Sheppard-ing to carry the thing off" heroically. Stony- 
jointed and stupified, the murderer stands between the 
two watchmen, who grasp him with a horror which is 
the mixed eff*ect of his own upon them, and of their 
scared discovery of the lifeless object before them. It 
is plain that if the murderer had been a flash Newgate 
Calendar hero, he could have burst away from them in 
a moment. But this would not have answered the pur- 
pose of the moralist. 

The above series, nevertheless, is among the least 
estimable of the artist's works ; and the last of this set 
is a horrible mixture of the real and ideal, each assist- 
B 



14 CHARLES DICKENS. 

ing the other to produce a most revolting effect. Tho 
remains of the executed murderer, which are extended 
upon the dissecting table, display a consciousness of 
his situation, and a hideous sensation of helpless yet 
excruciating agony. Such a picture, though the moral 
aim is still apparent, is not in the legitimate province 
of art ; and a similar objection might be made to the 
terrific picture of " Gin Lane," notwithstanding the ge- 
nius it displays. These latter productions we have 
quoted, to show that even in his objectionable pictures, 
Hogarth was never a mere designer of extravagances^ 
and also to mark the point where the comparison with 
him and Dickens stops. In dealing with repulsive char- 
acters and actions, the former sometimes does so in a 
repulsive manner, not artistically justifiable by any 
means, because it is a gross copy of the fact. The lat- 
ter never does this ; and his power of dealing with the 
■worst possible characters, at their worst moments, and 
suggesting their worst language, yet never once com- 
mitting himself, his book, or his reader, by any gross 
expression or unredeemed action, is one of the most 
marvellous examples of fine skill and good taste the 
world ever saw, and one great (negative) cause of his 
universal popularity. Had the various sayings and do- 
ings, manifestly suggested in some parts of his works, 
been simply written out — as they would have been in 
the time of Fielding and Smollet — his works would 
never have attained one tenth part of their present cir- 
culation. Three words — nay, three letters — would have 
lost him his tens of thousands of readers in nearly ev- 
ery class of society, and they would have lost all the 
good and all the delight they have derived from his wri- 
tings — to say nothing of future times. 

Upon such apparently slight filaments and conditions 
does popularity often hang ! An author seldom knows 
how vast an amount of success may depend upon the 
least degree of forbearance, and even if he does know, 
is apt to prefer his humour, and take his chance. The 
eflfect of a few gross scenes and expressions in the 
works of several great writers, as a continued draw- 
back to their acknowledged fame, is sufficiently and 
sadly palpable; nor can we bo entirely free from appre- 
hension that eventually, as refinement advances, they 
may cease to be read altogether, and be exiled to some 
remote niche in the temple of fame, to enjoy their own 
immortality. There are strong signs of this already. 



CHARLES i)ICKEN3. 15 

Mr. Dickens is one of those happily constituted indi- 
viduals who can " touch pitch without soihng his fin- 
gers ;" the peculiar rarity, in his case, being that he caa 
60 so without gloves ; and, grasping its clinging black- 
ness with both hands, shall yet retain no soil, nor ugly 
imemory. That he is at home in a wood — in green- 
lanes and all sweet pastoral scenes — who can doubt 
it that has ever dwelt among them] But he has also 
been through the back slums of many a St. Giles's. He 
never " picks his way," but goes splashing on through 
mud and mire. The mud and mire fly up, and lose 
themselves like ether — he bears away no stain — nobody 
has one splash. Nor is the squalid place so bad as it 
was before he entered it, for some " touch of nature" — 
of unadulterated pathos — of a crushed human heart 
uttering a sound from out the darkness and the slough, 
has left its echo in the air, and half purified it from its 
malaria of depravity. 

A few touches of genuine good feeling, of rich hu- 
mour, and of moral satire, will redeem anything, so far 
as the high principle, right aim and end of writing are 
concerned ; this, however, will not suffice for extensive 
popularity in these days. The form and expression 
must equally be considered, and the language managed 
skilfully, especially in the use of sundry metropolitan 
dialects. The secret w^as fully understood, and admira- 
bly practised by Sir E. L. Bulwer in his novel of " Paul 
Clifford ;" it was grievously misunderstood, except in 
the matter of dialect, by Mr. Ainsworth in his " Jack 
Sheppard," which was full of unredeemed crimes, but 
being told without any offensive language, did its evil 
work of popularity, and has now gone to its cradle in 
the cross-roads of liter^iture, and should he henceforth 
hushed up by all who have — as so many have — a per- 
sonal regard for its author. 

The methods by which such characters and scenes 
as have been alluded to, are conveyed to the reader 
with all the force of verisimilitude, yet without offence, 
are various, though it would perhaps be hardly fair to 
lift the curtain, and show the busy-browed artist " as 
he appeared" with his hands full. One means only, as 
adopted by Mr. Dickens, shall be mentioned, and chief- 
ly as it tends to bring out a trait of his genius as well 
as art. When he has introduced a girl — her cheeks 
blotched with rouge, her frock bright red, her boots 



16 CHARLES DICKENS. 

green, her hair stuck over with yellow hair-papers, and 
a glass of " ruin" in her hand — the very next time he 
alludes to her, he calls her " this young lady !" Now, 
if he had called this girl by her actual designation, as 
awarded to her by indignant, moral man — who has no- 
thing whatever to do with such degradation — the book 
would have been destroyed ; whereas, the reader per- 
fectly well knows what class the poor gaudy outcast 
belongs to, and the author gains a humorous effect by 
the evasive appellation. In like manner he deals with 
a dirty young thief, as " the first-named young gentle- 
man ;"* while the old Jew Fagin — a horrible compound 
of all sorts of villany, who teaches " the young idea" 
the handicraft of picking pockets, under pretence of 
having an amusing game of play with the boys — the 
author designates as " the merry old gentleman !" Ev- 
erybody knows what this grissly old hyena-bearded 
wretch really is, and everybody is struck with a sense 
of the ludicrous at the preposterous nature of the com- 
pliment. In this way the author avoids disgust — loses 
no point of his true meaning — and gains in the humour 
of his scene. He has other equally ingenious methods, 
which perhaps may be studied, or perhaps they are the 
result of the fine tact of a subtle instinct and good taste ; 
enough, however, has been said on this point. 

The tragic power and finer qualities of expression in 
Hogarth are elucidated with exquisite precision and 
truth by Charles Lamb in his Essay, where he calls 
particular attention to the " Rake's Progress ;" the last 
scenes of " Marriage a la Mode ;" " Industry and Idle- 
ness ;" and the " Distressed Poet." He makes some 
fine comments upon the expression which is put into 
the face of the broken-down Rake, in the last plate but 
one of that series, where " the long history of a mis- 
spent life is compressed into the countenance as plain- 
ly as the series of plates before had told it. There is 
no con-sciousness of the presence of spectators, in or 
out of the picture, but grief kept to a man's self, a face 
retiring from notice, with the shame which great an- 
guish sometimes brings with it — a final leave taken of 
hope — the coming on of vacancy and stupefaction — a 

* " Un dopo pranzo, il Furbo e niastro Bates avendo un invito per la sera, il 
primo noininato signorino si ficcd in capo di mostrare un certo genio," &c. 
Translation, Milano, 1840. But to designate the Artful Dodger throughout^ 
simply as "il Furbo," is hard — unhandsome. 



CHARLES DICKENS. 17 

beginning alienation of mind looking like tranquillity. 
Here is matter for the mind of the beholder to feed on 
for the hour together — matter to feed and fertilise the 
mind." This is not a fanciful criticism : all that Lamb 
describes of that face, is there^ and anybody may see, 
who has an educated eye, and clear perceptions of hu- 
manity behind it. Lamb also alludes to the kneeling 
feniaie in the Bedlam scene of the same series ; to the 
" sad endings of the Harlot and the Rake," in their re- 
spective '• Progresses ;" to the " heart-bleeding entreat- 
ies for forgiveness of the adulterous wife," in the last 
scene but one of " Marriage a la Mode," and to the 
sweetly soothing face of the wife which seems "to al- 
lay and ventilate the feverish, irritated feelings of her 
poor, poverty-distracted mate," in the print of the " Dis- 
tressed Poet," who has a tattered map of the mines of 
Peru stuck against his squalid walls. Quite equal, also, 
to any of these, and yet more clearly to the bent of our 
argument, is the "image of natural love" displayed in 
the aged woman in Plate V. of " Lidustry and Idle- 
ness," " who is clinging with the fondness of hope not 
quite extinguished, to her brutal vice-hardened child, 
whom she is accompanying to the ship which is to bear 
him away from his native soil : in whose shocking face 
every trace of the human countenance seems obliterated, 
and a brute beast's to be left instead, shocking and re- 
pulsive to all but her who watched over it in its cradle 
before it was so sadly altered, and feels it must belong 
to her while a pulse, by the vindictive laws of his coun- 
try, shall be suffered to continue to beat in it." 

How analogous, how closely applicable all this is to 
the finest parts of the works of Mr. Dickens, must be 
sufficiently apparent. It may be hardly necessary to 
mention any corresponding scenes in particular; one 
or two, however, rise too forcibly to the mind to be re- 
pressed. In " Oliver Twist" — the work which is most 
full of crimes and atrocities and the lowest characters, 
of all its author's productions, in which these things 
are by no means scarce — there are some of the deepest 
touches of pathos, and of the purest tenderness, not ex- 
ceeded by any author who ever lived — simply because 
they grow out of the very ground of our common hu- 
manity, and being Nature at her best, are in themselves 
perfect, by universal laws. Of this kind is the scene 
where the poor sweet-hearted consumptive child, who 
B2 



tB CHARLES DICKENS. 

is weeding the garden before anybody else has risen,, 
climbs up the gate, and puts his little arms through to 
clasp Oliver round the neck, and kiss him " a good 
bye," as he is running away from his wretched appren- 
ticeship.* They had both been beaten and starved in 
the workhouse together, and with the little child's 
"Good-bye, dear — God bless you!" went the full- 
throated memory of all the tears they had shed to- 
gether, and the present consciousness that they should 
never see each other again. When little Oliver opened 
the door at night to run away, the stars looked farther 
off than he had ever seen them before. The world 
seemed widening to the poor outcast boy. Does not 
the reader also recollect the terrible scene of the funer- 
al of the pauper in the same work 1 They, and every- 
thing about them, are so squalid and filthy that they 
look like " rats in a drain." She died of starvation — 
her husband, and her old mother are sitting beside the 
body. " 'I'here was neither fire nor candle, when she 
died. She died in the dark— in the dark. She couldn't 
even see her children's faces, though we heard her 
gasping out their names !" O, ye scions of a refined 
age — readers of the scrupulous taste, who, here and 
there, in apprehensive circles, exclaim upon Dickens 
as a low writer, and a lover of low scenes — look at this 
passage — find out how low it is — and rise up from the 
contemplation chastened, purified — wiser, because sor- 
row-softened and better men through the enlargement 
of sympathies. One more, though it can only be al- 
luded to, as it requires a full knowledge of the charac- 
ters and circumstances to be enough appreciated. It is 
the terrific scene where the girl Nancy is murdered by 
the brutal housebreaker Sykes.f The whole thing is 
done in the most uncompromising manner — a more fe- 
rocious and ghastly deed was never perpetrated ; but 
what words are those which burst from the beseeching 
heart and soul of the victim ? At this moment, with 
murder glaring above her, all the sweetness of a nature, 
which the extreme corrosion of an utterly vicious life 
had not been able to obliterate from the last recesses 
of her being, gushes out, and endeavouring to lay her 
head upon the bosom of her ruffian paramour, she calls 
upon him to leave their bad courses — to lead a new life 

* Oliver Twist, vol, i., c. 7. t Oliver Twist, vol, iii., c. 45. 



CHARLES DICKENS. 19 

— and to have faith in God's mercy ! While uttering 
which, she finds no mercy from man, and is destroyed. 

Any one who would rightly — that is, philosophically 
as well as pleasantly — estimate the genius of Mr. Dick- 
ens, should first read his works fairly through, nnd then 
read the Essays by Charles Lamb, and by Hazlitt,* on 
the genius of Hogarth ; or if the hesitating reader in 
question feels a preliminary distaste for anything which 
displays low vices without the high sauce of aristocra- 
cy to disguise the real repulsiveness (a feeling natural 
enough, by the way), then let him reverse the process, 
and begin with the Essays. 

It is observable that neither Hogarth nor Dickens 
ever portray a mere sentimental character, nor a mor- 
bid one. Perhaps the only exception in all Mr. Dick- 
ens' works is his character of Monks, which is a fail- 
ure — a weak villain, whose pretended power is badly 
suggested by black scovvlings and melo-dramatic night- 
wanderings in a dark cloak, and mouths-full of extrava- 
gant curses of devils, and pale-faced froth Ings at the 
mouth, and fits of convulsion. That the subtle old Fa- 
gin should have stood in any awe of him is incredible : 
even the worthy old gentleman, Mr. Brownlow, is too 
many for him, and the stronger character of the two. 
In fact, this Monks is a pretender, and genuine charac- 
ters only suit the hand of our author. A merely re- 
spectable and amiable common-place character is also 
pretty certain to present rather a wearisome, prosy ap- 
pearance in the scenes of Hogarth and of Dickens. 
They are only admirable, and in their true element, 
when dealing wdth characters full of unscrupulous life, 
of genial humour, or of depravities and follies : or with 
characters of tragic force and heart-felt pathos. 

Both have been accused of a predilection for the lower 
classes of society, from inability to portray those of the 
upper classes. Now, the predilection being admitted, the 
reason of this is chiefly attributable to the fact that 
there is little if any humour or genuine wit in the upper 
classes, where all gusto of that kind is polished away ; 
and also to the fact that both of them have a direct 
moral purpose in view, viz., a desire to ameliorate the 
condition of the poorer classes by showing what soci- 
ety has made of them, or allowed them to become — and 
to continue. 

* On Marriage i la Mode. 



20 CHARLES DICKENS. 

Neither of these great artists ever concentrates the in- 
terest upon any one great character, nor even upon two 
or three, but while their principals are always highly 
finished, and sufficiently prominent on important occa- 
sions, they are nevertheless often used as centres of 
attraction, or as a means for progressively introducing 
numerous other characters which cross them at every 
turn, and circle them continually with a buzzing world 
of outward vitality. 

There is a profusion and prodigality of character in 
the works of these two artists. A man, woman, or 
child, cannot buy a morsel of pickled salmon, look at 
his shoe, or bring in a mug of ale ; a solitary object can- 
not pass on the other side of the way ; a boy cannot 
take a bite at a turnip, or hold a horse ; a by-stander 
cannot answer the simplest question ; a dog cannot fall 
into a doze ; a bird cannot whet his bill ; a pony cannot 
have a peculiar nose, nor a pig one ear, but out peeps 
the first germ of " a character." Nor does the ruling 
tendency and seed-filled hand stop with such as these ; 
for inanimate objects become endowed with conscious- 
ness and purpose, and mingle appropriately in the back- 
ground of the scene. Sometimes they even act as prin- 
cipals, and efficient ones too, either for merriment and 
light comedy, genial beauty and sweetness, or the most 
squalid pantomimists of the " heavy line of business." 
Lamb particularly notices what he terms " the dumb 
rhetoric of the scenery — ^for tables, and chairs, and joint- 
stools in Hogarth are living and significant things," and 
Hazlitt very finely remarks on the drunken appearance 
of the houses in " Gin Lane," which " seem reeling and 
tumbling about in all directions, as if possessed with the 
frenzy of the scene." All this is equally apparent in 
the works of Dickens. He not only animates furniiurc, 
and stocks and stones, or even the wind, with human 
purposes, but often gives them an individual rather than 
a merely generalized character. To his perceptions, 
old deserted broken-windowed houses grow crazed with 
" staring each other out of countenance," and •crook- 
backed chimney-pots in cowls turn slowly round with 
witch-like mutter and sad whispering moan, to cast a 
hollow spell upon the scene. The interior of the house 
of the miser Gride,* where there stands an " old grim 

* Nicholas Nicldeby, vol. li.jchap. 56. 



CHARLES DICKENS. 21 

clock, whose iron heart beats heavily within his dusty 
case," and where the tottering old clothes-presses " slink 
away from the sight" into their melancholy murky cor- 
ners — is a good instance of this ; and yet equally so is 
the description of the house* in which the Kenwigses, 
Newman Noggs, and Crowl, have their abode, where 
the parlour of one of them is, perhaps, " a thought dir- 
tier" (no substantial difference being possible to the 
eye, the room is left to its own self-consciousness) than 
any of its neighbours, and in front of which ''the fowls 
who peck about the kennels, jerk their bodies hither 
and thither with a gait which none but town fowls are 
ever seen to adopt." Nor can we forget the neigfibour- 
hood of " Todgers's," where " strange, solitary pumps 
were found hiding themselves, for the most part, in 
blind alleys, and keeping company with fire-ladders. "f 
All these things are thoroughly characteristic of the 
condition and eccentricity ot the inmates, and of the 
whole street, even as the beadle's pocket-book, " which, 
like himself, was corpulent." A gloomy building, with 
chambers in it, up a yard, where it had so little busi- 
ness to be, "that one could scarcely help fancying it 
must have run there when it was a young house, play- 
ing at hide-and-seek with other houses, and have for 
gotten the way out again ;"J and the potatoes, which, 
after Cratchit had blown the fire, '* bubbled up, and 
knocked loudly at the saucepan lid, to be let out, and 
peeled"^ — these are among the innumerable instances 
to which we have alluded. These descriptions and 
characteristics are always appropriate ; and are not 
thrown in for the mere sake of fun and farcicality. 
That they have, at the same time, a marvellous tenden- 
cy to be very amusing, may cause the sceptic to shake 
his head at some of these opinions ; the pleasurable fact, 
nevertheless, is in any case quite as well for the author 
and his readers. 

Mr. Dickens' characters, numerous as they are, have 
each the roundness of individual reality combined with 
generalization — most of them representing a class. 
The method by which he accomplishes this, is worth 
observing, and easily observed, as the process is always 
the same. He never developes a character from with- 
in, but commences by showing hov/ the nature of the 

* Nicholas Nicklehy, vol. ii., chap. 14. t Martin Chuzzlewit, chap. 9. 
t Christmas Carol,, j). 18. () Ibid., p. 87. 



22 CHARLES DICKENS. 

individual has been developed externally by his whole 
life in the world. To this effect, he first paints his por- 
trait at full-length ; sometimes his dress before his face, 
and m.ost commonly his dress and demeanour. When 
he has done this to his satisfaction, he feels in the man, 
and the first words that man utters are the key-note of 
the character, and of all that he subsequently says and 
does. The author's hand never wavers, never becomes 
nntrue to his creations. What they promise to I e at 
first (except in the case of Mr. Pickwick, about whom 
the author evidently half-changed his mind as he pro- 
ceeded) they continue to the end. 

That Mr. Dickens often caricatures, has been said by- 
many people ; but if they examined their own minds 
they would be very likely to find that this opinion chiefly 
originated, and was supported by certain undoubted car- 
icatures among the illustrations. Le ccUhre Cniishank 
— as the French translator of " Nicholas Nickleby" 
calls him, appears sometimes to have made his sketch- 
es without due reference, if any, to the original. These 
remarks, however, are far from being intended to inval- 
idate the great excellence of many of the illustrations 
in " Oliver 'I'wist" and " Nicholas Nickleby," and also 
of those by Hablott Brown and Cattermole in " Barnaby 
Rudge" and " Martin Chuzzlewit." 

What a collection — what a motley rout — what a 
crov/d — what a conflict for precedence in the mind, as 
WQ pause to contemplate these beings v/ith whom Mr. 
Dickens has over-peopled our literature. Yet there are 
but few which, all things considered, we should wish to 
" emigrate." The majority are finished characters — 
not sketches. Of those which were most worthy of 
their high finish many instantly arise in person to su- 
persede the pen. Mr. Pecksniff, sit down ! yo-u are not 
asked to address the chair on behalf of the company. 
Nor need Sam W'eller commence clearing a passage 
\vith one hand, and pulling forward Mr. Pickv,Mck with 
the other : nobody can speak satisfactorily for an as- 
semblage composed of such heterogeneous elements. 
The cordial welcome which would be so very applica- 
ble to Old Fezziwig, John Browdie, Nev/man Noggs, 
Tom Pinch, and a hundred others, would fall very unintel- 
ligibly on the air on turning to the face of Ralph Nickle- 
by, Mr. Brass, Jonas Chuzzlewit, and a hundred others. 
What Variety and contrast, yet what truth, in such char- 



CHARLES DICKENS. 23 

acters as Oliver Twist and Barnaby Riidgc, the Yankee 
agent Scadder, and Hugh, Mr. Varden and Mr. Brass, 
Melly's grandfather, and Mr. Stiggins ! Nor should we 
forget Sykes's dog, Kit's pony, and Barnaby's raven. 
But however excellent our author may be in his men, 
he is equally so with his women. Mrs. Weller, and 
Mrs. Nickleby, Mrs. Jarley and Miss Montflathers, Mrs. 
Gamp, the Marchioness, Mrs. Varden, the widow who 
accused Mr. Pickwick, the sisters Cherry and Merry, 
and little Nell, and many more, are all acquaintances 
for life. In his young lady heroines Mr. Dickens is not 
equally successful. They have a strong tendency to 
be unromantically dutiful, which in real life, is no 
doubt " an excellent thing in woman," but it is apt, un- 
less founded upon some truly noble principle, to become 
uninteresting in fiction. Their sacrifices to duty are 
generally common-place, conventional, and of very 
equivocal good, if not quite erroneous. Some of the 
amiable old gentlemen are also of the description so 
very agreeable to meet in private life, but who do not 
greatly advantage the interest of these books, amidst the 
raciness and vigour of which they hardly form tiie right 
sort of contrast. With reference to his female charac- 
ters, however, who are " better-halves," if his portraits 
be faithful representations, especially of the middle and 
lower classes — and it is greatly to be feared they are 
but too true, in many cases — then we shall discover the 
alarming amount of screws, scolds, tartars, and terma- 
gants, over whom her Britannic Majesty's liege married 
subjects male, pleasantly assume to be "lords and mas- 
ters." France lifts its shoulders at it, and Germany 
turns pale. 

The materials of which the works under our present 
consideration are composed, are evidently the product 
of a frequent way- faring in dark places, and among the 
most secret haunts where vice and misery hide their 
heads ; this way-faring being undertaken by a most ob- 
serving eye, and a mind exactly suited to the qualities 
of its external sight. Many and important may be the 
individual biographical facts; but if ever it were well 
said of an author that his " life" was in his books, (and a 
very full life, too,) this might be said of Mr. Dickens. 
Amidst the variety of stirring scones and characters 
which unavoidably surround every one who has duties 
to perform among mixed classes of mankind, and amidst 



24 CHARLES DICKENS. 

the far darker scenes and characters which the bent of 
his genius caused him to trace out into their main sour- 
ces and abodes, were the broad masses of his knowledge 
derived, and the principal faculties of his mind and heart 
wrought up to their capacious development. When he 
has not seen it before, he usually goes to see all that 
can be seen of a thing before he writes about it. To 
several of the characters he has drawn, objections have 
often been made, that they were exaggerations, or oth- 
erwise not perfectly true to nature. It is a mistake to 
think them untrue : they are, for the most parUfac-sim- 
He creations, built up with materials from the life, as re- 
tained by a most tenacious memory. They are not 
mere realities, but the type and essence of real classes ; 
while the personal and graphic touches render them at 
the same time individualized. Sometimes, it is true, 
he draws a mere matter-of-fact common-place reality ; 
and these individuals, like Mrs. Maylie, Mr. Brownlow, 
Harry Maylie, Mrs. Bedvvin, (except when the latter 
wipes the tears from her eyes, and then wipes her spec- 
tacles' eyes by the unconscious force of association,) 
and several others, are a sort of failure " in a book" 
•where they walk about with a very respectable and 
rather uncomfortable air. 

The delineation of characters constitutes so very 
much the more prominent and valuable portion of Mr. 
Dickens' works, that it is extremely difficult to detach 
them from any view of an entire production. Take 
away his characters, and the plots of his stories will 
look meagre and disconnected. He tells a very short 
story admirably ; but he cannot manage one extending 
through a volume or two. His extended narrative is, 
in fact, a series of short stories, or pictures of active 
interest introducing new people, who are brought to 
bear more or less— scarcely at all, or only atmospher- 
ically, sometimes — upon the principals. Perhaps he 
may not have the faculty of telling a story of prolonged 
interest : but, in any case, he has done right hitherto 
not to attempt it by any concentrating unity of action. 
Not any of his characters are weighty enough in them- 
selves to stand " the wear and tear" and carry on the 
accumulating interests of a prolonged narrative. They 
need adventitious aids and relief; and most ably and 
abundantly are these supplied. 

The immense circulation of Mr. Dickens' works, both 



CHARLES DICKENS. 25 

at home and abroad, and the undoubted influence they 
exercise, render it an imperative duty to point out ev- 
erything in them which seems founded in error, and the 
moral tendency of which may be in any way and in any 
degree injurious. We are anxious to display his most 
striking merits — and every fault worth mentioning. 
INor do we believe, when looking at the direct and be- 
nevolent aim w^hich characterize*! all the author's ef- 
forts, that such a proceeding car: ?neet with any other 
feeling on his part than that of a frank approval, even 
though he may not in all cases be disposed to admit the 
validity of the objections. 

The main design of Mr. Dickens is for the most part 
original, and he always has a moral aim in view, tend- 
ing to effect practical good. The moral tendency of all 
his works is apparent, if they are regarded in their en- 
tireness as pictures of human nature, in which no ro- 
mantic sympathy is sought to be induced towards what 
is vicious and evil — but antipathy and alarm at present 
misery and ultimate consequences — while a genuine 
heart-felt sympathy is induced towards all that is essen- 
tially good in human nature. This is true of all his 
"works considered under general views ; in some of the 
details, however, the morality becomes doubtful from 
an undue estimate of conventional duly when brought 
into collision with the affections and passions. The 
author always has the purest and best intentions on this 
score ; nevertheless, some of his amiable, virtuous and 
high-spirited characters break down lamentably, when 
brought into conflict with society's grave, misleading 
•code on the subject of heart and pocket, or "birth." 
Thus, Rose Maylie — the beautiful young heroine in 
*' Oliver Twist"^— refuses her devoted lover, whom she 
also loves, merely because she does not know who her 
parents were, and she is therefore of " doubtful birth," 
and actually persists in her refusal. Nor is this com- 
promise of the strongest and best feelings of nature to 
mere conventional doubts the only objectionable part of 
the story ; for the act is spoken of as a fine thing in her 
to do, as inferring a refined feeling for her lover's hon- 
our and future satisfaction, though he, the man himself, 
declares he is satisfied with what she is, let her origin 
have been as doubtful or as certain as it might. Being 
^uiie assured of his love, she tells him he " must en- 
deavour to forget hei" — that he should think of "how 
C 



26 CHABLES DICKENS. 

many other hearts he might gain" — that he should make 
her the confidante "of some other passion." These 
are the wretched, aggravating insincerities so often em- 
ployed in real life. It is not intended that Rose should 
be regarded as a fool or a coquette, or in any other dis- 
advantageous light ; but on the contrary she is said to 
have " a noble mind," to be " full of intelligence ;" and 
that her characteristic is "self-sacrifice." Here, then, 
occurs the very eqCfocal, if not totally erroneous mo- 
rahty; for so far from this act being simply one of 
"self-sacrifice," the fact is apparent that Rose sacrifi- 
ces her lover's genuine unadulterated feeling to her 
overweening estimate of her own importance as a strict- 
ly correct-principled young lady in the social sphere. 
When he leaves the house early in the morning with an 
aching heart, looking up in vain for a last glimpse, she 
secretly peeps at him from behind the window curtains ! 
There is too much of this already in the actual world, 
and it should not be held up for admiration in works of 
fiction. She makes, finally, a very bad excuse about 
the duty she owes " to herself," which is, that she, not 
knowing her origin, and being portionless, should not 
bring any disgrace upon her lover, and blight his " brill- 
iant prospects ;" and very much is also said about the 
great " triumphs" this young 'squire is to " achieve" in 
parliament and upwards, by " his great talents, and 
powerful connections." This only adds nonsense to 
the young lady's false morality and prudery ; for the 
young 'squire is one of those ordinary sort of clever 
sparks, about whose great talents and probable achieve- 
ments the less that is said the better.* 

It has been remarked that our author does not de- 
velope his characters from within, but describes them 
with a master-hand externally, and then leaves them to 
develope themselves by word and action, which they do 
most completely. His process is the converse of that 
of Godwin, who developes solely from within, and whose 
characters dilate as they advance, and more than carry 
out the first principles of their internal natures with 
which we were made acquainted. On the other hand, 
let any one turn to the description of Rose Maylie when 
she is first introduced, and then it will be seen that the 
expected character "breaks down" — nothing comes of 

* Oliver Twist, chaps. 29, 33, 34. 



CHARLES DICKENS. 27 

it. Again : it must be admitted that Kate Nickleby is 
an admirable, high-spirited, and very loveable girl ; and 
that Nicholas Nickleby is a very excellent counterpart, 
and a young man of that sort of thorough- bred mettle, 
which wins regard and inspires entire confidence. Yet 
both, undoubtedly fine spirits, get themselves into equiv- 
ocal positions where their best and strongest feelings 
are concerned. Kate refuses the hand of Frank Cheer- 
yble, because she is poor and he rich, and she has re- 
ceived kindness and assistance from his uncles : Nicho- 
las gives up Madeline Bray, for precisely the same rea- 
•sons, — though in point of value, as human beings, Nich- 
olas and Kate are very superior to the somewhat too 
real Mr. Frank, and the dutifully uninteresting Miss 
Madeline, who has consented — the old story of having 
a selfish father — to marry the miserly dotard, Andrew 
Gride. Now, each of the parties is well aware of the 
love of the other, which they sacrifice to a minor moral. 
If the self-sacrifice of the individual were all that was 
involved in the question, then indeed gratitude and other 
secondary causes might perhaps be fairly allowed to 
influence the painful resignation of a higher feeling ; but 
where the happiness of the beloved object — and this is 
the main point of the question — is involved, then the 
sacrifice becomes, to say the least of it, an equivocal 
morality — a certain evil, with some very doubtful good. 
At the head of the chapter which displays the quadruple 
sacrifice made by Nicholas and Kate, are these words- — 
*' Wherein Nicholas and his sister forfeit the good opin- 
ion of all worldly and prudent people." On the contra- 
ry ; what they do is precisely in accordance with the 
opinion of the worldly and prudent, and would be certain 
to obtain the usual admiration. 

But the author's better genius is not be thwarted by 
these half-measures and short-comings, and strict lines 
of duty ; for the truth of imagination is stronger in him 
than the prudence of all the world. Out of his own book 
will we convict him. After Kate has told her brother 
of her rejection of the man who loved her, (and whom 
she loved,) on the grounds of her poverty and obliga- 
tions to his uncle, her brother thus soliloquiz<s. " What 
man," thought Nicholas proudly, " would not be suffi- 
ciently rewarded for any sacrifice of fortune, by the 

* Nicholas Nickleby, chap. 61. 



28 CHARLES DICKENS. 

possession of such a heart as this, which, bnt that" (here 
peeps in the extraneous misgiving) " hearts weigh light, 
and gold and silver heavy,"' (but this should not be so 
■with lovers !) " is beyond all praise. Frank has money, 
and wants no more. IMore, would not buy him such a 
treasure as Kate ? And yet in unequal marriages the rich 
parly is always supposed to make a great sacrifice, and 
the other to get a good bargain !" (And again, the mis- 
giving in full force.) " But I am thinking like a lover, 
or like an ass, which I suppose is pretty nearly the 
same."* Instead of being an ass, this stumbling lover, 
who continues to run his head against the truth, rather 
figures as a moralist malgre lui. The vacillations in the 
above passage are striking. The main truth of the ques- 
tion, however, is yet brought out unalloyed by the good 
heart of " brother Charles," W'ho says banteringly to his 
nephew : " How dare you think, Frank, that we would 
have you marry for money, when youth, beauty, and every 
amiable virtue and excellence were to be had for love 1" 
That is the point; well said, " old 'true-penny." Ad- 
dressing Nicholas, he thus continues : " Madeline's heart 
is occupied b}^ you, and worthily and naturally. This 
fortune is destined to be yours, but you have a greater 
fortune in her, sir, than you would have in money, were 
it forty times told."t Surely a sincere passion ought to 
teach all this to lovers, without waiting for a hint from 
the '• w arm" old gentleman of the story ] 

Yet again, an objection of another kind — for Mr. Dick- 
ens has quite enough strength to be dealt with unspa- 
ringly. It has been previously said, and the reasons for 
the opinion have been stated, that " Oliver Twist," the- 
work which is open to most animadversion, has a ben- 
eficial moral tendency, and is full of touches of tender- 
ness, and pathos, and of generous actions and emotions. J 
The objection about to be offered, is on the ground of 
justice being made vindictive and ferocious, which, be 
it ever so just, has not a good moral tendency. This 
is said with reference to the death of a most detestable 
ruffian — Sykes — and it was important that no sympathy 
should, by any possibility, be induced towards so brutal- 
ized a villain. Such, however, is the case ; for the 

* Nicholas Nickleby, chap. 61. + Ibid. chap. 63. 

t The author's i n in id uctory defence to the third edition we have only seea 
after finishing this essay. It is unanswerable, but ought not to have been 
needed. 



CFIARLES DICKENS. 29 

author having taken over-elaborate and extreme pains 
to prevent it, the " extremes meet." After the brutal 
murder of the poor girl Nancy, the perpetrator hurries 
away, he knows not whither, and for days and nights 
•wanders and lurks about fields and lanes, pursued by the 
most horrible phantoms and imaginings, amidst ex- 
haustion from hunger and fatigue and a constant terror 
of discovery. Far from making a morbid hero of him, 
in any degree, or being guilty of the frequent error of 
late years, that of enueavouring to surround an atro- 
cious villain with various romantic associations, Mr. 
Dickens has shown the murderer in all his wretched- 
ness, horror, and utter bewilderment consequent on his 
crime. So far, the moral tendency is perfect. A cli- 
max IS required ; and here the author over-shoots his 
aim. I'erhaps, in reality, no retribution, on earth, could 
■very well be too heavy for such a detestable wretch as 
'Sykes to suffer; but we cannot bear to see so much. 
The author hunts down the victim, like a wild beast, 
through mud and mire, and darkness, and squalid ways, 
'with crowds upon crowds, like hell-hounds gnashing 
and baying at his heels. Round the grim and desolate 
old edifice, the haunt of crime and desperation, rising 
out of a deep corrosion of filth, as if it had actually 
grown up, like a loathsome thing out of the huge ditch — 
round this darksome and hideous abode, in which the 
murderer has taken his last refuge with thrice-barred 
doors, the infuriate masses of human beings accumulate, 
throng upon throng, like surge after surge, all clamour- 
ing for his life. Hunted with tenfold more ferocity 
than ever was fox, or boar, or midnight wolf— having 
scarce a chance of escape — certain to be torn and tram- 
pled amidst his mad, delirious struggles, into a miry 
death, when caught — our sympathies go with the hunt- 
ed victim in this his last extremity. It is not " Sykes, 
the murderer," of whom we think — it is no longer the 
"criminar in whose fate we are interested — it is for 
that one worn and haggard man with all the world 
against him — that one hunted human creature, with an 
infuriate host pursuing him, howling beneath for his 
blood, and striving to get at him, and tear him limb from 
limb. All his old friends turn away from him — look 
mutely at him, and aghast — and down below, all round 
the hideous house, in hideous torch-light boils up the 
surging sea of a maddened multitude. His throwing up 
C2 



30 CHARLES DICKENS. 

tbe window, and menacing the crowd below, had a gran- 
deur in it— it rouses the bipod — we menace with him — 
we would cast off from his plunging horse, that man. 
who " showed such fury," and offered money for his 
blood — from the bridge, that man who incessantly called 
out that the hunted victim would escape from the back 
— and we would have silenced the voice from the bro- 
ken wall, that screamed away the last chance of a des- 
perate man for his life. In truth, we would fairly have 
had him escape — whether to die in the black moat be- 
low, or alone in some dark and far-off field. We are 
with this hunted-down human being, brought home to 
our sympathies by the extremity of his distress ; and 
we are 7iot with the howling mass of demons outside. 
The only human beings we recognize are the victim — 
and his dog. 

If the above feeling be at all shared by general read- 
ers, it will then appear that Mr. Dickens has defeated 
his own aim, and made the criminal an object of sym- 
pathy, owing to the vindictive fury with which he is 
pursued to his destruction, because the author was so 
anxious to cut him ofl' from all sympathy. The over- 
strained terror of the intended moral, has thus an im- 
moral tendency. It may, perhaps, be argued that as the 
sympathy only commences at that very point, where 
the detestable individual is lost sight of, and verges into 
the generalized impression of a human being in the last 
degree of distress — there is no sympathy given to the 
criminal? The moment he is again thought of as the 
murderer Sykes, the sympathy vanishes ; and therefore 
no harm is done. This would present very fair grounds 
for a tough metaphysical contest, but it is never good to 
throw the feelings into a puzzle, and we prefer to enter 
a direct protest against the accumulation of vindictive 
ferocity with which this criminal is pursued, as tending 
to defeat the unquestionable moral aim of the author. 

Certainly not the highest, but certainly the most prom- 
inent characteristic of Mr. Dickens' mind, is his hu- 
mour. His works furnish a constant commentary on 
the distinction between wit and humour ; for of sheer 
"wit, either in remark or repartee, there is scarcely an 
instance in any of his volumes, while of humour there 
is a fulness and gvsto in every page, which would be 
searched for in vain to such an extent, among all other 
authors. It is not meant that there are not several au- 



CHARLES DICKENS. 31 

thors, and of the present time, who might equal the best 
points of humour in any of Mr. Dickens' works, but 
there is no author who can " k,eep it up" as he does ; no 
author who can fill page after page with unfaihng and 
irresistible humour, the only "relief" to which, if any, 
shall be fun, and the exuberance of animal spirits — a 
surplus vitality like that which makes him, after signing 
his name to a letter or note, give such a whirl of flour- 
ishing, which resembles an immense capering over a 
thing done, before he is " off" to something else. No 
other author could have written the whole of chapter 
twenty-nine of " Martin Chuzzlewit," — nor perhaps the 
last two pages. Frequently, the humour is combined 
with the richest irony — as at the funeral of old Anthony 
Chuzzlewit, where the doctor and the undertaker affect 
not to know each other. Frequently the humour takes 
the appearance of burlesque and farce, as when Mr. 
Bumble the beadle puts on his cocked hat, and dances 
round the tea-table ; but when it is recollected that he 
has been courting the mistress of the place, and has just 
discovered himself to be an accepted man, and that she 
has left him alone in the room in the first glow of con- 
scious success, the genuine humour of the proceeding 
becomes manifest. Sometimes the humour not only 
takes the show of mere animal spirits, but may be said 
to depend solely upon them, and to set the lack of wit 
at utter defiance, as by absolute challenge. This is often 
done in the person of Master Charley Bates,* who usu- 
ally falls into shouts of merriment at nothing in itself 
laughable ; and of John Browdie,f who once nearly 
choaks himself, displaying a great red face and round 
eyes, and coughing and stamping about with immoder- 
ate laughter — and all for the poorest jokes. The joke 
is felt to be nothing, yet the effect upon John Browdie 
is so palpable, that it is irresistible to the beholder. In 
like manner, Mr. Mould | palates, and relishes, and re- 
peats, one of the very smallest and driest of jokes, be- 
cause it has a directly professional application that 
tickles him ; and such is his unaffected delight, that at 
last, witless as it is, the humorous effect is unquestion- 
able. But if such points as these might be equalled by 
several other authors, there are various scenes in the 
works of Mr. Dickens which are peculiar to himself^ 

* See Oliver Twist, t Nicholas Nickleby. i See Martin Chuzzlewit. 



32 CHARLES DICKENS. 

for their fullness of humour, minj^led with subtle irony, 
and knowledge of life and character, and are in their 
combinations unlike any other author. No other author, 
of past or present times, so far as can be judged by their 
productions, could have written several scenes, or chap- 
ters, taken entire, as they stand in the works of " Boz." 
For instance, the whole chapter in which Mr. Mould, 
the undertaker, is discovered in his domestic relations,* 
where the very nature of the whole man is brought out 
by the fulsome palavering gossip of the nurse, Mrs. 
Gamp, who has been ""recommended" by Mr. Mould to 
nurse a certain sick man, and whose permission she 
comes to ask that she may go and nurse another sick 
man all night, and thus receive pay from both. Another 
■nurse, recommended by Mr. Mould, was attending upon 
the latter sick man by day — and it is therefore evident 
that she also leaves her charge at night to go probably 
to do duty elsewhere. Hence it appears that four sick 
people are neglected during twelve hours out of each 
twenty-four, so that Mr. Mould has good chances of a 
funeral or two among them. Nothmg of this kind is 
said — nothing is thrown up to the surface of the scene, 
except its racy humour — but are not the inferences pal- 
pable in their keen irony] The scene where this hor- 
rid nurse, Mrs Gamp, goes to fill her office by the sick 
bed for the night f is an unexampled mixture of the hu- 
morous, the grotesque, the characteristic, and detesta- 
ble — to say nothing of the practical service of the 
*' warning." Two other scenes occur to the mind, 
which, for the richness of their humour and character, 
and the thorough knowledge the author has of " his 
men," are, in their way, quite unparalleled and unrival- 
led in literature. We allude to the scenes where the 
two men wlio, in their circumstances, and the external 
character they supported, would have been the last vol- 
untarily to lose those wits which were so very necessary 
always to be kept '• about them," did actually lose the 
same for a time by getting intoxicated— need it be said 
that these two men are the methodist preacher Mr. 
Stiggins, called "the Shepherd :"| and the plausible, 
smooth-surfaced, self-possessed hypocrite, Mr. Peck- 
sniff"^ — the character which bids fair to be, when the 
work is finished, the master-piece of all the author's 

* Martin Chuzzlewit, chap. 25. t Ibid., chap. 25. 

i The Pickwick Tapers. () Martin Chuzzlewit, chap, 0. 



CHARLES DICKENS. 33 

numerous characters, or rivalled only by the more sub- 
tle delineation of young Martin Chuzzlewit. If ever 
the conflicting proverbs that " liquor disguises a man" — 
and, that "drunkenness exposes a man," were brought 
to a final issue in favour of the exposition of nature in- 
duced by the latter, here may it be witnessed in those 
two inimitable scenes. They not only display the se- 
cret capacities and the habitual bent of the mind, but 
may also be regarded as physiological studies. A man 
of genius, to develope and set forth the noble objects of 
his soul, need not absolutely possess great physical ener- 
gies, for his work can wait — whether he be above ground 
or beneath it ; but a charlatan, to succeed, must possess 
a strong physique, for his work cannot wait, and he 
must reap while he lives, or not at all. In the most, 
humorous and strictly characteristic manner — yet with- 
out the least apparent purpose— the physique of the 
Shepherd, and of Mr. Pecksniflf, is displayed in these 
scenes, and we there discover how much secret strength 
was necessary to enable them to maintain, at all other 
times, their bland and unruffled exterior, and to repress 
and govern so much dangerous " stuff" within them. 
The grave, oily, most respectable Mr. Pecksniff, after 
being repeatedly put to bed, yet as repeatedly jumping up 
again, and appearing at the top of the landing-place in, 
his shirt, discoursing with polite, half-conscious absurdi- 
ty over the banisters, gives a finish to his character, 
such as no other condition of aff^iirs could accomplish, 
and no words so exquisitely portray. It is the same 
man, drunk, who, being sober, had the strength of self- 
possession — when his house was filled with confusion, 
and the last man he wished to see that confusion, was 
at his door — to settle the dangerous parties in different 
rooms, and putting on a gardening hat, open the door 
himself with a demure face and a spade in his hand! 
"The force of humour could no further go." 

But if Mr. Dickens does not display anything of what 
is recognized as sheer wit in his writings, he frequently 
indulges in irony, and sometimes in sarcasm. To his 
great credit, these instances are never of a morbid mis- 
anthropical kind, and in the shape of transient side hits 
and stabs at human nature ; they will almost invariably be 
found directed against social wrongs, " the insolence of 
office," against false notions of honour, against mere ex- 
ternal respectability, and with a view to defend the poor 



34 CHARLES DICKENS. 

against injustice and oppression. His favourite method, 
however, of exposing and attacking wrongs, and " aba- 
ting nuisances," is through the humorous display of char- 
acters actively engrossed with their own objects and 
designs. "With theories, or systems of philosophy which 
are not to his mind, he also deals in a similar style of 
pleasantry. The opening pages of Chapter XIII. of 
*•' Oliver Twist," are an admirable instance. 

If it be an interesting thing to trace the cause and 
means of a man's rise to fame, and the various methods 
by which he mastered obscurity amidst all the crowd 
struggling for the same narrow door, and fairly won the 
sympathy, the admiration, and the gold of contempora- 
neous multitudes, it is no less curious and interesting 
to observe the failures of successful men, their miscal- 
culations at the very height of the game, and the re- 
doubled energy and skill with which they recovered 
their position. Few are perhaps aware that Mr. Dickens 
once wrote an Opera ; not very many perhaps know that 
he wrote a Farce for the theatre, which was acted ; and 
the great majority of his readers do not at all care to 
remember that he wrote a " Life of Grimaldi," in two 
volumes. The opera was set to music very prettily by 
HuUah, and was produced at the St. James' theatre ; 
but, somehow, it vanished into space ; albeit, at dusty- 
old book-stalls, pale-faced near-sighted men, poking over 
the broken box or tea-chest that usually contains the 
cheap sweepings of the stock within, avouch that once 
or twice they have caught a glimpse of the aforesaid 
lyrics, labelled price three pence. As for the theatrical 
piece, it " went oflF" in a smoke, with Harley wringing 
his hands at the top of the cloud ; and for the '• Life of 
Grimaldi," everybody was disappointed with it, because, 
although Joseph was certainly in private " no fool," yet 
as the only hold he had upon our sympathies was with 
reference to his merry-makings at Christmas-tide, the 
public certainly did not expect to find most of that set 
aside, and in its place a somewhat melanchol}'" narrative 
hopeless of all joyous result from the first, yet endeav- 
ouring to be pleasant " on the wrong side of the mouth.'* 
It was like the rehearsal of a pantomime, the poor clown 
being of course in "plain clothes," and having pains in 
his limbs, from a fall. It was a sad antithesis to expect- 
ation, and all old associations. 

Leaving these failures behind him with so light a pace 



CHARLES DICKENS. 35 

that no one heard him moving off, and never once turn- 
ing back his head, — which might have attracted the pub- 
lic attention to his ill-kick — our author started forward 
on his way, as if nothing had happened. 

The slowness, and dogged grudging with which the 
English public are brought to admit of great merit, ex- 
cept in cases where their admiration is suddenly carried 
off unawares from them, is only to be equalled by the 
prodigality of disposition towards a favourite once highly 
established. And this influences all classes, more or 
less. A recent instance must have caused our author 
great merriment. At a public dinner a short time since, 
Mr. Serjeant Talfourd, regretting the absence of his 
friend Mr. Dickens, paid an appropriate and well-merited 
compliment to the breadth of surface over which the 
life, character, and general knowledge contained in his 
works, extended. The reporter not rightly hearing this, 
or not attending to it, but probably saying to himselfj, 
* Oh — it's about Dickens — one can't go wrong,' gave a 
version of the learned Serjeant's speech in the next 
morning's paper, to the effect that Mr. Dickens' genius 
comprised that of all the greatest minds of the time, 
put together, and that his works represented all their 
works. The high ideal and imaginative — the improve- 
ments in the steam-engine and machinery — all the new 
discoveries in anatomy, geology, and electricity, with, 
the prize cartoons, and history and philosophy thrown 
into the bargain, — search from the " Sketches by Boz" 
to Martin Chuzzlewit inclusive, and you shall find, in. 
some shape or other " properly understood," everything 
valuable which the world of letters elsewhere contains. 
The gratuitous gift of this confused accumulation, is only 
to be equalled by the corresponding gift of " madness," 
with which our most amusing, and, in his turn, most 
amused author was obligingly favoured by an absurd re- 
port, extensively circulated, some year or two ago. 

The true characteristics of Mr. Dickens' mind are 
strongly and definitively marked — they are objective, 
and always have a practical tendency. His universality 
does not extend beyond the verge of the actual and con- 
crete. The ideal and the elementary are not his region. 

Having won trophies over so large a portion of the 
intellectual and plastic world, Mr. Dickens projected a 
flight into the ideal hemisphere. Accordingly he gave 
us Master Humphrey, and his Clock. The design had 



36 CHARLES DICKENS. 

a sort of German look ; but the style in which it open- 
ed was precisely that adopted by the American novel- 
ist Brockden Brown, (a man of original genius beyond 
doubt— the author of " Carwin," '' Wieland," &c..) in 
one of his works especially, we forget which. The in- 
troduction, which only bordered upon the ideal, and 
seemed to be a preliminary softening of our mortal 
earth, with a view to preparing it for " fine air," was no 
sooner over than the reader had to commence a second 
preparation, called an " Introduction to the Giant Chron- 
icles," which was going back to the old style of " Boz," 
and seemed like giving the matter up at the oi tset. 
The " First Night of the Giant Chronicles" settled the 
business. The real giant, " Boz," could make nothing 
of the ideal giants— they turned out to be mere Guild- 
hall fellows, pretending to know something beyond the 
city. The " Clock Case" was a dead failure, so was 
the " Deaf Gentleman." so was the " Correspondence." 
Affairs began to look ominous. A brief story of tragic 
interest was told, and finely. It diverted the attention; 
but the author was obliged to proceed with his series, 
and accordingly he commenced " The Old Curiosity 
Shop" — a sufficiently vague title, which might lead to 
anything or nothing — and then we had some fresh fail- 
ures in the shape of " Correspondence." Now, if the 
author had been a vain man, or a wrong-headed, pur- 
blind egotist, resolved to go on with something unsuit- 
able to his mind, and to insist upon success with all 
fact and fancy, and nature and art, against him, then it 
would have been all over with the popularity of the re- 
nowned " Boz." Instead of which, the author's good 
sense, self-knowledge, adroitness, and tact, made him 
clearly see the true state of the case, and the surest rem- 
edy ; he accordingly called up to the rescue some old- 
established favourites, and after introducing Mr. Pick- 
wick to Master Humphrey, and bringing Sam Weller 
and old Weller into the kitchen beneath the luckless 
" Clock," he literally undermined his own failure, and 
blew it up, as soon as he saw the prospect of a clear 
field before him. It was well done. The wood-cut at 
the end of the " Old Curiosity Shop," in which Master 
Humphrey is represented seated in his chair, surround- 
ed by elves, fairies, and grotesque spirits — is all very 
much in the way of Tieck and Hoffman, but out of Mr. 
Dickens' way, and he rapidly abandoned it. 



CHARLES DICKENS. 37 

In his delightful little book — a better hearted one 
never issued from the press— called " A Christmas 
CaroV in prose, something of the same kind is again 
attempted, and certainly with success. In his concep- 
tion, description, and management of the First and 
Third of the Spirits that visit Scrooge, there are the 
true elements of the supernatural world. They are 
'" high German" and first-rate. The allegorical descrip- 
tion of the Spirit of the Past, is perfect. As for the 
jolly Giant, he is a modern Goth. The knocker which 
changes into Marley's dead-alive face, and yet remains 
a knocker, is taken from Hoffman's " Golden Pot ;" but 
there is abundance of genuine supernaturalism about 
him which must have been made on the spot. 

Our author is conspicuous for his graphic powders. 
All his descriptions are good, often excellent ; some- 
times, both for minute truths and general eff'ect, perfect. 
Humorous descriptions are his forte ; and serious de- 
scription is no less his forte, though he far less often 
indulges in it. Perhaps it may be said that his ei/e is 
" worth all his other senses ;" at all events, it is never 
" made the fool" of the other senses — except where it 
ought to be so (sympathetically) in describing objects 
seen through the medium of passion. It will presently 
be shown that this exception constitutes one of the 
finest elements, if not the finest element of his genius. 
But the feature in his writings, now under considera- 
tion, is the power he possesses of describing things as 
they actually exist — in fact, of seeing so much more in 
a given space and time than people usually do, of copy- 
ing it down in the words most appropriate to bring it 
before other minds, and of faithfully recollecting and 
harmoniously combining his materials. After descri- 
bing the furniture and decorations of a room — walls — 
floor, and ceiling — and alluding to two different groups 
of people, the author carelessly says : " Observing all 
this in the first comprehensive glance with which a 
•stranger surveys a place that is new to him, &c."* A 
stranger indeed ! It is w^ell, perhaps, for many " in- 
teriors" that every stranger who just pops in his head, 
does not always see quite so much. The reader may 
also recollect, perhaps, the entrance of Mrs. Gamp into 
the sick chamber, who, with one glance round, sees the 

* Nicholas Nicldeby, vol. i., cliap. 32 

D 



38 CHARLES DICKENS. 

contents of the room, and the prospect of chimney- 
pots, and gable-ends, and roofs, and gutters, out at th-e 
garret window !* 

It is not necessary to make any remark on the de- 
scriptions given of the dress and other external appear- 
ances of the characters introduced by Mr. Dickens, ex- 
cept to say that he considers such descriptions display 
the character in all its individuality. H e does not distinct- 
ly say this, but his opinion incidentally slips out in speak- 
ing of the Massachussets' Asylum for the Blind. f H e re- 
sembles Sir Walter Scott in this respect, and like Scott,. 
he also frequently gives the portrait minutely. Some of 
the faces of his men are drawn with the tangible trutli 
of Hans Holbein, such as the Yankee agent Scadder.J: 
the man with two different profiles — one alive and teem- 
ing with palpable rascality, the other like a dead wall 
with a thief behind it. There is more done, however, 
in some instances than merely giving the portrait — its 
expression is given at a critical moment; and, in one 
instance, the reflection of expression from face to face 
is displayed under the influence of strong excitement, 
in which the very physiology of family characteristics 
boils up through and above all diff'erences of nature and 
circumstance, shines out with a light at once noble 
yet devilish, and culminates on a common centre of 
passion. The scene is between Ralph, Nicholas, and: 
Kate Nickleby.^ 

In describing local scenery, Mr. Dickens is generally 
faithful and minute ; his inventions of scenery are rather 
(as such things should be) transcripts from memory 
carefully combined. His " American Notes" have not 
been valued so much as they deserve, on account of 
certain manifest exaggerations of travelling scenes (not 
of sea-faring, for that is all true enough,) and also be- 
cause the public wanted something more, and some- 
thing less, they hardly knew what. But if his excellent 
and humanely-purposed accounts of public institutions 
do not obtain for these volumes a sufficient regard, the 
descriptions they contain of American " locjtions," and 
of wood-scenery, particularly in canal-traveliing, ought 
to give them a permanent position as historical land- 
scape records to be referred to in future years whea 



* Martin Chuzzlewit, chap. 25. t American Notes, vol. i., chap. 3. 

I Martin Chuzzlewit, chap. 31. i Nicholas Nickleby chap. 64. 



CHARLES DICKENS. 39 

the face of that great country has become changed. 
Any one who has iravelled in those parts can hardly 
fail to recognize the perfect truth of these descriptions, 
many of which must have been copied down on the 
spot. 

Amidst the various sets of somewhat elaborate mem- 
oranda, notes, and outlines, from which this essay is 
written, there are few more numerous in references 
than our slip of paper headed with " Happy Words and 
Graphic Phrases." As when the avaricious dotage of 
the toothless old miser, Arthur Gride, is cheered with a 
prospect of success, to which he returns no other an- 
swer than " a cackle of great delight ;" as when the plac- 
ards of a company of strolling players are issued " with 
letters afflicted with every possible variety of spinal de- 
formity f as when the watery currents "toyed and 
sported" with the drowned body of Quilp, "now bruis- 
ing it against the slimy piles, now hiding it in mud or 
long rank grass, now dragging it heavily over rough 
stones and gravel, now feigning to yield it to its own 
-element, and in the same action luring it away," &c. ; 
as when a set of coffin-lids standing upright, cast their 
shadows on the wall " like high-shouldered ghosts with 
their hands in t.heir pockets ;" and an old harpsichord 
in a dusty cornel* is described by " lisjinglmo: anatomy ;" 
as when Mr. Pecksniff, overcome with wine, speaks of 
the vain endeavour to keep down his feelings, " for the 
more he presses the bolster upon them, the more they 
look round the corner !" Or, when it is said of one of 
those wooden figure-heads that adorn ships' bows, and 
timber yards, that it was " thrusfiyig itself forward with 
that excessively loide-awake aspect, and air of somewhat 
obtrusive politeness by which figure-heads are usually 
characterized." All these, moreover, tend to establish 
the statement previously made as to the predominating 
feature of characterization displayed throughout Mr. 
Dickens' works, and the consequent difficulty of sep- 
arating this feature from almost every other, so inwo- 
ven is it into the texture of the whole. The first two 
paragraphs of the chapter which opens with the descrip- 
tion of the interior of the house of the miser Gride, for 
graphic truth and originality, as applied to the endow- 
ment of old furniture with the very avariciousness and 
personal character of their owner, yet without the loss 
of their own identity as old furniture, or any assistance 



40 CHARLES DICKENS. 

from preternatural fancies, are probably without par- 
allel in the literature of this or any other country.* 

Mr. Dickens' style is especially the graphic and hu- 
morous, by means of which he continually exhibits the 
most trifling- and common-place things in a new and 
amusing light. Owing to the station in life of the ma- 
jority of his characters, a colloquial dialect of the re- 
spective classes is almost unavoidable ; even his narra- 
tive style partakes of the same familiarity, and is like tell- 
ing the listener " all about it ;" but no one else ever had 
the same power of using an abundance of "slang" of all 
kinds, without offence, and carrying it off, as well as ren- 
dering it amusing by the comedy, or tragic force of the 
scene, and by its unaffected appropriateness to the utter- 
ers. Sometimes, however, certain of these licenses 
are not so fitly taken by the author, where they acci- 
dentally slip out of the dialogue into the narrative ; nor 
can good taste approve of the title-page of " Martin 
Chuzzlevvit," which reminds one of some of the old 
quack and conjuring treatises, servant-maids' dream- 
books, or marvellous tracts of bigoted biography and 
old-fashioned rhodomontade. It is unworthy of the 
work, which, so far as can be judged at present, will 
probably be its author's most highly-finished production. 

The " Sketches by Boz" are, for the most part, rath- 
er poor affairs. Except the " Visit to Newgate" — the 
" Hospital Patient," and the " Death of the Drunkard" 
— especially the death-bed scene in the second, and the 
delirium and suicide of the last, which are fearfully 
truthful and impressive— there are few of the papers 
which are above mediocrity. 

That far higher qualities have been discovered in him, 
by certain students of literature, not only in England, 
but on the continent of Europe, than his " Sketches," 
and the " Pickwick Papers" contain, can hardly admit 
of doubt; nevertheless a few remarks may be offered in 
addition to what has previously been said, to explain 
more popularly the grounds which men of intellect have 
for " the faith that is in them" with regard to the genius 
of Mr. Dickens. 

So far as a single epithet can convey an impression 
of the operation of his genius, it may be said that Mr. 
Dickens is an instinctive writer. His best things are 

* Nicholas Kicldeby, chap. 51. 



-CHARLES DICKENS. 41 

■sncldenly revealed to him ; he does not search for them 
ill his rniiid : they come to him ; they break suddenly 
upon hiin, or drop out of his pen. He does not tax his 
brain, he transcribes what he finds writing itself there. 
This is the peculiar prerogative of a true creative ge- 
nius. His instincts manifest themselves in many subtle 
ways, both seriously and humorously. Thus ; when 
Lord Verisopht, the foolish young nobleman who has 
wasted his life in all sorts of utter folly, is on his way 
to fight a duel which is lated to close his career, it is 
said that "the fields, trees, gardens, hedges, everything 
looked very beautiful ; the young man scarcely seemed 
to have noticed them before, though he had passed the 
same objects a thousand times."* The whole of the 
passage should be carefully read : it is deeply pathetic. 
It is as though Nature, whom the foolish young lord had 
forgotten during his whole life, had gently touched his 
heart, reminding him that he should take one look at 
her, thus to refine and sweeten, with her balmy tender- 
ness and truth, the last brief interval of his existence. 
It should also be remarked that the author calls him 
" the young man" this once only — previously he was 
always a scion of nobility — now he is simplified for the 
grave. No hard study and head-work, no skill in art 
and writing can produce such things as these. They 
are the result of a fine instinct identifying itself with 
given characters, circumstances, and elementary princi- 
ples. When Sykes hurries homeward with the deter- 
mination of destroying the girl, it is said that he " never 
once turned his head to the right or left, or raised his 
eyes to the sky, or low^ered them to the ground, but 
looked straight hcfore him ;"t and this will be found to be 
the invariable characteristic of every fierce physical 
resolution in advancing towards its object. Before he 
commits the murder he extinguishes the candle though 
it is scarce daybreak, but says that " there is light 
enough for what he hat; got to do''"' — the tone of expres- , 
sion suggesting a vague notion of some excuse to him- 
self for his contemplated ferocity, as if it were a sort of 
duty. Allusion may also be made to his not daring to 
turn his back towards the dead body all the time he re- 
mained in the room ; to the circumstances attending his 
flight, and to the conduct of his dog. The same fine in- 

* Nicholas Nickleby, chaji. 50. t Oliver Twist, chap. 45. 

D2 



42 CHARLES DICKENS. 

stinct is displayed, in a different form, in the circum- 
stances preceding- the suicide of Ralph Nickleby — the 
hideous churchyard for the poor — his recollections of 
having been one of a jury, long before, on the body of a 
man who had cut his throat, and his looking through the 
iron railings " wondering which might be his grave ;" 
the set of drunken fellows who were passing, one of 
whom danced, at which a few bystanders laughed, and 
one of them looking round in Ralph's face, he, as if galvan- 
ized, echoed the laugh, and when they were gone recol- 
lected that the suicide whose grave he had looked for, 
had been merry when last seen before he had commit- 
ted the act.* And again, the same instinct manifests 
itself in a perfectly different mode in the deeply affect- 
ing conduct of the old grandfather — deep beyond tears 
— on the death of Nelly, and also after her death ;t and 
with equal truth and subtlety when Dennis, the hang- 
man, has received sentence of death| — every word he 
utters is with the sense of strangulation upon him, and 
a frantic struggling against visible fate. He " knows 
by himself" what thoughts are now passing in the mind 
of the man who is to execute him. Of a humorous 
kind the instances are too abundant even to be referred 
to ; one or two only shall be noticed. After Mr. Mould,. 
the undertaker, has discoursed about certain prospective 
funerals, and looked out of his window into a church- 
yard " with an artist's eye to the graves,*' while sipping 
a tumbler of punch, he covers his head with a silk hand- 
kerchief, and takes a little nap\ — an expressive com- 
ment upon an undertakers composed and pleasant idea 
of death. When "poor Tom Pinch" has lighted old 
Martin Chuzzlewit with a lanthorn across the fields at 
night, he immediately blows out the candle for his own 
return|| — prompted, as it seems, by a sensation of no 
sort of consequence being attached to himself, and un- 
consciously influenced by the strictly frugal habits of 
his employer. In speaking to Jonas of a little surprise 
he contemplated for his daughters (who evidently knew 
all about it,) Mr. Pecksniff lowers his voice, and treads 
on tip-toe, though his daughters are two miles off;^ his 
sensation actually coinciding with an imaginative im- 
pulse derived from his own lie. One more : the unfor- 

* Nicholas Nickleby, chap. 62. + The Old Curiosity Shop, chaps. 71, 72, 
X Barnaby Rud^e, chap. 76. ^ Martin Chuzzlewit, chap. 25. 

y Ibid., chap. 24. ^ Ibid., chap. 20. 



CHARLES DICKENS. 43 

tunate Smike having been caught by Squeers, and 
brought to the house of Mr. Snavvley, who is at supper, 
the latter declares " it is clear that there has been a 
Providence in it," — and this he utters casting his eyes 
down with an air of humility, and elevating his fork 
with a bit of lobster on the top of it, towards the ceiling. 
-' Providence is against him, no doubt," replied Mr. 
Squeers, scratching his nose. "Of course, that was to 
be expected." Mr. Snawley then addressing the de- 
testable Mr. Squeers, makes the moral reflection that 
*' Hard-heartedness and evil doing will never prosper." 
" Never was such a thing known," rejoined Squeers, 
taking a roll of notes from his pocket-book to see that 
they were all safe.* Let no lover of fun suppose that 
the ludicrous circumstances of this dialogue are merely 
introduced to produce a laugh at the graphic absurdity : 
they mark the hypocrisy and the total absence of any 
real sense of Providence, in these two scoundrels, while 
the last action of Squeers betrays a sudden instinctive 
consciousness, if not of his own villany, at least of 
the consequences which sometimes ensue on such do- 
ings as his. 

Now, it may be said, that Mr. Dickens does not per- 
haps intend all this, which has been regarded as the 
workings of a fine instinctive faculty — that such things 
are accidental — that he is not conscious of such infer- 
ences himself, nor troubles his head about them, and 
that the critic is playing the part of Mr. Curdle, who 
wrote a long treatise to inquire whether the nurse's 
husband in Romeo and Juliet, really was " a merry 
man," which seemed doubtful from the fact of the one 
slender joke recorded of him. Possibly; and if Mr. 
Dickens can write so suggestively by accident, " happy 
man be his dole." The trial scene of the Jew Fagin is 
full of these wonderful " accidents." Howbeit, there 
are the fiction-facts ; and there the critic's comii>ents ; 
the reader can settle the question to his own mind. It 
may, however, be observed that if such inferences were 
the mere invention or fancy of the present essayist, 
similar things would occur to him in reading the works 
of other novelists and writers of fiction. But they sel- 
dom do, except with the greatest writers, and with no 
others of the present time, in an equal degree. The 

* Nicholas Nickleby, chap. 38, 



44 CHARLEg DICKENS. 

very names given to so many characters — names which 
express the nature or peculiarity of the individual, and 
which are at once original, eccentric, humorous, and 
truthful, — would serve to prove that such a number of 
happy "hits" could never have been made unintention- 
ally. But this unconsciousness of the operation of 
their own genius, which was perhaps the case with 
nearly all the great writers of former times, hardly ap- 
plies now with any force in our age of constant analy- ' 
sis and critical disquisition. During the actual moments 
of composition a great inventive genius will of course 
be forgetful of himself, and how he works, and ivhere 
it all comes from ; but to succeed in these days, with 
any chance of posterity, an author must know well 
what he is about. Some of the details of his execution 
may fairly bear more appropriate inferences than a 
man of genius literally intended ; will continually do 
so ; but all such things in Mr. Dickens, and in other 
novelists and dramatists, are the spontaneous offspring 
of a mind that has started upon a well-understood 
course, and a nervous system that lives in the charac- 
ters and scenes of imaginative creation. 

Under the head of " instinctive writing" must also be 
-classed those subtle intuitions which are the peculiar, 
and perhaps, exclusive prerogative of a fine inventive 
genius. He describes (in " Oliver Twist") very remark- 
able phenomena sometimes attending sleep as well as 
stupor, when objects of the external senses partially 
obtain admission, and are perceived by the dreaming 
mind ; representing a condition of knowledge without 
power, as though a foot were on either shore of the 
worlds of vision and reality, the soul being conscious 
of both, and even of its own anomalous slate. This, 
however, he may have experienced ; as, in like man- 
ner, what he describes (in the " American Notes") of 
the ffeculiar delirium and forlorn brain-wandering some- 
times induced by prolonged sea-sickness. His por- 
traiture of a heart-breaking twilight condition of fatuity, 
brought on by age, and want, and misery, are stronger 
cases in point, yet these he miglit have witnessed. 
But he can have no actual experience either in his own 
person or that of others, of what emotions and thoughts 
are busy in the innermost recesses of the body and soul 
of the perpetrator of the worst crimes — of the man con- 
4iemned for death, of the suicide, and of those who are 



CHARLES DICKENS. ' 45 

actually in the last struggle. Yet everybody of ordina- 
ry imagination and sensibility has felt the vital truth of 
these descriptions, the home-stinging whisper, or loud 
cry, of Nature within his being, as he read them. 

Of the tragic power, the pathos, and tenderness con- 
tained in various parts of xMr. Dickens' works, many 
examples have already been given, nor can space be 
afforded for more than a brief reference to one or two 
more. Nothing can be more striking than the last 
scenes in the lives of Hugh, of Dennis, and of Barnaby 
Rudge, each so different, yet so true to the character — 
the first so suggestive of barbaric greatness and sad 
waste of energies — the second so overwhelming in. 
physical apprehensions, and revolting in abject wretch- 
edness — the last so full of motley melancholy, resigned 
yet hopeless, a sweetness above despair, a brain for 
once blessed by an imbecility that places him beyond 
the cruel world, and meekly smiling at all its " capital" 
laws. The trial scene of Fagin is a master-piece of 
tragic genius. There are many little incidents in our 
author's works of the same kind as the following: — 
"When the poor, maltreated, half- starved boys all run 
away from the Yorkshire school, " some were found 
crying under hedges, and in such places, frightened at 
the solitude. One had a dead bird in a little cage ; he 
had wandered nearly twenty miles, and when his poor 
favourite died, lost courage, and lay down beside him." 
During the riots described in Barnaby Rudge (chapter 
77) — "One young man was hanged in Bishopsgate- 
street, whose aged grey-headed father waited for him 
at the gallows, kissed him at its foot when he arrived, 
and sat there on the ground till they took him down. 
They would have given him the body of his child ; but 
he had no hearse, no coffin, nothing to remove it in, 
being too poor ; and walked meekly away beside the 
cart that took it back to prison, trying as he went to 
touch its lifeless hand." Words — few as they are — of 
heart-breaking humanity, the only comment upon 
which must be a silent, scalding tear. The death of 
Nelly, and her burial, are well-known scenes, of deep 
pathetic beauty. 

A curious circumstance is observable in a great portion 
of the scenes last mentioned, which it is possible may 
have been the result of harmonious accident, and the 
author not even subsequently fully conscious of it. It 



46 CHARLES DICKENS. 

is that they are written in blank verse, of irregular me- 
tre and rhythms, which Southey and Shelley, and some 
other poets have occasionally adopted. The passage 
properly divided into lines, will stand thus, — 

NELLY'S FUNERAL. 

And now the bell — the bell 
She had so often heard by night and day, 

And listened to with solemn pleasure, 
E'en as a living' voice — 
Rung its remorseless toll for her, 
So young, so beautiful, so good. 

Decrepit age, and vigorous life, 
And blooming youth, and helpless infancy. 
Poured forth— on crutches, in the pride of strength 
And health, in the full blush 
Of promise, the mere dawn of life — 
To gather round her tomb. Old men were there, 
Whose eyes were dim 
And senses failing — 
Grandames, who might have died ten years ago, 
And still been old— the deaf, the blind, the lame, 

The palsied, • 
The living dead in many shapes and forms. 
To see the closing of this early grave. 

What was the death it would shut in. 
To that which still could crawl and creep above it I 
Aiong the crowded path they bore her now ; 
Pure as the new-fallen snow 
That covered it ; whose day on earth 
Had been as fleeting. 
Under that porch, where she had sat when Heaven 
In mercy brought her to that peaceful spot, 
She passed again, and the old church 
Received her in its quiet shade. 

Throughout the whole of the above only two unim- 
portant words have been omitted, — m and its; "gran- 
dames" has been substituted for "grandmothers," and 
"e'en" for " almost." All that remains is exactly as in 
the original, not a single word transposed, and the punc- 
tuation the same to a comma. The brief homily that 
concludes the funeral is profoundly beautiful. 

Oh ! it is hard to take to heart 
The lesson that such deaths will teach, 
But let no man reject it, 
For it is one that all must learn. 
And is a mighty, universal truth. 
When death strikes down the innocent and young, 
Fot every fragile form from which he lets 
The parting spirit free, 
A hundred virtues rise, 
In shapes of mercy, charity, and love, 
To walk the world and bless it 
Of every tear 
That sorrowing mortals shed on such green graves, 
Some good is born, some gentler nature comes. 



CHARLES DICKENS. 47 

Not a word of the original is changed in the above 
quotation, which is worthy of the best passages in 
"Wordsworth, and thus, meeting on the common ground 
of a deeply truthful sentiment, the two most unlike men 
in the literature of the country are brought into the 
closest approximation. Something of a similar kind of 
versification in the prose mAy be discovered in Chap. 
77 of " Barnaby Rudge." The following is from the 
concluding paragraph of " Nicholas Nickleby :" — 

The grass was green above the dead boy's grave, 
Trodden by feet so small and light, 
That not a daisy drooped its head 

Beneath their pressure. 
Through all the spring and summer time 
Garlands of fresh flowers, wreathed by infant hands, 
Rested upon the stone- 

Such are the " kindly admixtures," as Charles Lamb- 
calls the union of serious and comic characters and 
scenes in Hogarth, which are to be found in abundance 
throughout the works of Mr. Dickens. Following up 
his remark, Lamb adds that " in the drama of real life 
no such thing as pure tragedy is to be found; but mer- 
riment and infelicity, ponderous crime, and feather-like 
variety," &c. Surely this is not sound as a theory of 
art 1 Pure tragedy is to be found in the drama of real 
life, if nothing else intervenes at the moment, or the 
principles are ail too absorbed and abstracted to be con- 
scious of the presence of anything else. Pure tragedy, 
therefore, exists in nature, as well as in art ; and ideal 
art obtains it by stopping short all interference, and 
keeping the separation absolute. Another point of art 
of a difterent kind is in the fit and harmonious admixture 
of the opposite elements of tragedy and comedy, and a 
fine artist never confounds the two, or brings them into 
abrupt and offensive contrast and revulsion. Interme- 
diate shades and gradations are always given. It is one 
of Mr. Dickens' greatest merits, that notwithstanding 
his excessive love of the humorous, he never admits any 
pleasantries into a tragic scene, nor suffers a levity ta 
run mischievously across the current of any deep emo- 
tion in a way to injure its just appreciation. In this re- 
spect he is the direct converse of Thomas Ingoldsby, 
who not only mixes jests inextricably with horrors, but 
makes fun of the very horrors themselves — not ghost 
stories, nor burlesques, are here meant, but murderous 
deaths of men, women, and children. Rare subjects for 
fun! 



48 CHARLES DICKENS. 

A pure feeling of religion, and a noble spirit of Chris- 
tian charity and active benevolence is apparent in all 
appropriate places throughout the works of Charles 
Dickens. After describing the poor girl born blind, 
deaf, and dumb, whom he saw in the Massachussetts' 
Asylum, at Boston, and about whose course of life, ed- 
ucation, and present state he excites so lively an inter- 
est, he concludes with a striking passage.* The same 
principles and feelings are also apparent in various in- 
cidental, and perhaps scarcely conscious side-hits and 
humorous touches which occur in the progress of the 
narratives or dialogues — as, for instance, where Sykes' 
dog is shown to entertain so very Christian-like an un- 
Christianity in his behaviour, and the sentiments he en- 
tertains with regard to other dogs. It is amusing to see 
how all this puzzles the Italian translator, who says 
the passage must have a hidden meaning — " un senso 
nascoso." 

As a general summary of the result of Mr. Dickens' 
works, it might be said that they contain a larger num- 
ber of faithful pictures and records of the middle and 
lower classes of England of the present period, than 
can be found in any other modern works; and that 
while they communicate very varied, and frequently 
very squalid and hideous knowledge concerning the 
lower, and the most depraved classes, and without the 
least compromise of the true state of men and things, 
the author nevertheless manages so skilfully that they 
may be read from beginning to end without a single 
offence to true and unaffected delicacy. Moreover, 
they tend on the whole to bring the poor into the fairest 
position for obtaining the sympathy of the rich and 
powerful, by displaying the goodness and fortitude of- 
ten found amidst want and wretchedness, together with 
the intervals of joyousness and comic humour. As Haz- 
litt says of Hogarth, that " he doubles the quantity of 
our experience," so may it be said of Dickens, with the 
additional circumstance, that all the knowledge of" life" 
which he communicates is so tempered and leavened, 
that it will never assist a single reader to become a 
heartless misanthrope, nor a scheming " man of the 
world." 

At the commencement of this paper a comparison 

* American Notes, vol. i., pp. 103, 104. 



CHARLES DICKENS. 49 

was instituted between Hogarth and Mr. Dickens. 
Dropping that comparison, the examination of the works 
of the latter has continued down to this point by deal- 
ing solely with the works themselves, as much as if no 
others of the same or of similar class existed. In a 
philosophical and elementary sense comparisons are 
always inevitable to the formation of our judgments ; 
not so, the bad system of always lugging in such ex- 
traneous and too often " odious" assistances. But we 
think we have fairly earned the right of doing some- 
thing of this kind in conclusion ; and perhaps it may be 
expected of us. 

Mr. Dickens has often been compared with Scott, 
with Fielding, and Le Sage. He is not at all like Scott, 
whose materials are derived from histories and tradi- 
tions, as shown by his elaborate notes to every chap- 
ter — all worked up with consummate skill. Mr. Dick- 
ens has no notes derived from books or records, but 
from a most retentive memory and subtle associations ; 
and all this he works up by the aid of an inventive ge- 
nius, and by genuine impulse rather than art. Scott 
and Fielding are great designers of plot and narrative. 
Dickens evidently works upon no plan; he has a lead- 
ing idea, but no design at all. He knows well what he 
is going to do in the main, but how he will do this, it is 
quite clear he leaves to the impulse of composition. 
He moves in no fixed course, but takes the round of na- 
ture as it comes. He imposes no restraints upon him- 
self as to method or map ; his genius cannot bear the 
curb, but goes dancing along the high road, and bolts 
ad libitum. (It is not to be admired.) He is like Scott 
and Fielding in the fleshl}^ solidity, costume, and com- 
pleteness of his external portraitures. He is also like 
Fielding in some of his best internal portraitures. Scott 
does very little in that way. The Preface to the French 
translation of " Nicholas Nickleby" says of it, " Ce livre 
est un panorama mouvant de toutes les classes de la 
societe Anglaise ; un critique fine et piquante de tous 
les ridicules, une vaste composition a la maniere de 
' Gil Bias,' ou mille personnages divers se meuvent et 
posent devant le lecteur." This is quite true as to the 
method of working out their ideas ; but with this mo- 
ving panorama of divers classes, and the excellent delin- 
eation of character, all resemblance ceases. The ten- 
dency of the great and too delightful work of Le Sage, 
E 



50 CHARLES DICKENS. 

is to give us a contempt for our species, and to show 
that dishonesty and cunning are the best poUcy. The 
power over the grotesque and the pathetic, displayed 
by Cervantes, added to his love of beauty in pastoral 
scenes, and to his deep-heartedness, offers a far closer 
and more worthy comparison ; although we are aware 
that our author is not so poetical and elevated as Cer- 
vantes, nor would he have been likely to delineate such 
a character as Don Quixote — who comprises within him- 
self the true flower and consummation of the chivalrous 
spirit, with its utter absurdity and end. But except in 
this one character, these two authors have a close affini- 
ty in genius. Mr. Dickens is not like Gay, " The Beg- 
gar's Opera" was written to be sung ; it is a poetical, 
satire ; its heroes are idealized ; their vice and theft 
do not shock in the least ; and people nod their heads 
to the burthen of " Tyburn Tree," because it is only a 
song and satire which hangs upon it. The gallows of 
the " Beggar's Opera" was not meant for poor, base 
thieves ; it was a flight far above the rags of " beggars" 
— it was meant for "better company!" Not so witli 
the thieves and fine gentlemen of Mr. Dickens. The 
men and things he deals with he means actually as he 
calls them ; the only exception to their reality is that 
they represent classes ; the best of them are never me- 
chanical matter-of-fact portraits. It is this closeness 
to reality, so that what he describes has the same effect 
upon the internal sense as thinking of reality, that ren- 
ders Dickens very like De Foe ; not omitting the pow- 
er over the pathetic and grotesque also possessed by 
both. Yet with all these resemblances, Mr. Dickens is 
an original inventor, and has various peculiarities, the 
entire effect of which renders his works, as wholes, un- 
like those of any other writer. 

Mr. Dickens is manifestly the product of his age„ 
He is a genuine emanation from its aggregate and en- 
tire spirit. He is not an imitator of any one. He mix- 
es extensively in society, and continually. Few public 
meetings in a benevolent cause are without him. He 
speaks effectively — humorously, at first, and then seri- 
ously to the point. His reputation, and all the works 
we have discussed, are the extraordinary product of 
only eight years. Popularity and success, which in- 
jure so many men in head and heart, have improved 
him in all respects. His influence upon his age is ex- 



CHARLES DICKENS. 51 

tensive — pleasurable, instructive, healthy, reformatory. 
If his " Christmas Carol" were printed in letters of gold, 
there would be no inscriptions which would give a more 
salutary hint to the gold of a country. As for poster- 
ity, let no living man pronounce upon it ; but if an opin- 
ion may be offered, it would be that the earlier works 
of Mr Dickens — the " Sketches by Boz," and some oth- 
ers— will die natural deaths ; but that his best produc- 
tions, such as " Nicholas Nickleby," the " Old Curios- 
ity Shop," " Oliver Twist," and " Martin Chuzzlewit," 
will live as long as our literature endures, and take 
rank with the works of Cervantes, of Hogarth, and De 
Foe. 

Mr. Dickens is, in private, very much what might be 
expected from his works— by no means an invariable 
•coincidence. He talks much or little according to his 
sympathies. His conversation is genial. He hates ar- 
g-ument ; in fact, he is unable to argue — a common case 
with impulsive characters who see the whole truth, and 
feel it crowding and struggling at once for immediate 
utterance. He never talks for effect, but for the truth 
or for the fun of the thing. He tells a story admirably, 
and generally with humorous exaggerations. His sym- 
pathies are of the broadest, and his literary tastes ap- 
preciate all excellence. He is a great admirer of the 
j^oetry of Tennyson. Mr. Dickens has singular person- 
al activity, and is fond of games of practical skill. He 
is also a great walker, and very much given to dancing 
Sir Roger de Coverley. In private, the general im- 
pression of him is that of a first-rate practical intellect, 
with "no nonsense" about him. Seldom, if ever, has 
any man been more beloved by contemporary authors, 
and by the public of his time. 

Translations are regularly made in Germany of all 
Mr. Dickens' works. They are quite as popular there 
as with us. The high reputation of the Germans for 
their faithfulness and general excellence as translators, 
is well supported in some of these versions ; and in oth- 
ers that reputation is perilled. Bad abbreviations, in 
which graphic or humorous descriptions are omitted, 
and the characteristics of dialogue unnecessarily avoid- 
ed, are far from commendable. No one could expect 
that the Italian " Oliviero Twist," of Giambatista Ba-^ 
seggio, published in Milan, would be, in all respects, far 
better than one of the most popular versions of that 



62 CHARLES DICKENS. 

work in Leipzig. But such is the fact. Some of the 
French translations are very good, particularly the 
"Nicolas Nickleby" of E. de la Bedollierre, which is 
admirably done. Mr. Dickens also " lives" in Dutch, 
and some of his works are, we believe, translated into 
Russian. 



LORD ASHLEY 



DR. SOUTH WOOD SMITH. 

" And ye, my Lord6s, with your alliaiince, 
And other faithful people that there be. 
Trust I to God, shall quench all this noisaunce. 
And set this lande in high prosperitie." — Chaucer. 

" To plunge into the infection of hospitals ; to survey the mansions of sor- 
row and pain ; to take the gauge and dimensions of misery, depression, and 
contempt; to remember the forgotten, and to attend to the neglected." — 

BvRKB. 

" Trace the forms 
Of atoms moving with incessant change 
Their elenrental round ; behold the seeds 
Of being, and the energy of life 
Kindling the mass with ever-active flame , 
Then to tlie secrets of the working mind 
Attentive turn." — Akenside. 

" Yet much remains 
To conquer still : peace hath her victories 
No lessrenown'd than war." — Milton. 

The spirit of the philosophy of antiquity offers a 
striking contrast to that of the present age in the ten- 
dency of the latter to diffuse itself among the people. 
In the whole range of scientific or demonstrable knowl- 
edge which has been grasped by human intelligence, 
we have now nothing approaching to the old Esoteric 
and Exoteric doctrine. With results at least as brilliant 
as those which have distinguished any former age, the 
instruments of induction and experiment continue to be 
used to extend the boundaries of knowledge; but that 
which no former age has witnessed is the energy which 
is now put forth to make the doctrines of science known 
aud to teach the masses how to apply them to their ad- 
vantage. The men at present in possession of the key 
of knowledge, value it chiefly as it enables them to 
tmlock treasures for universal diffusion, and estimate 
their own claim to distinction and honour by the meas- 
ure in which ihey have enriched the world. This spirit 
is strongly exemplified in the waitings of Dr. South- 
E2 



64 LORD ASHLEY AND 

wood Smith, and the course of his public life. By na- 
ture and education he seems to have been formed rather 
for the retirement and contemplation of the study, than 
the active business of the world. The bent of his mind 
led him at an unusually early age to the investigation of 
the range of subjects that relate more or less directly 
to intellectual and moral philosophy; and, as not un- 
frequently happens, the efforts of those around him to 
give to his pursuits a widely different direction only in- 
creased his love for these studies. 

Having determined on the practice of medicine as a 
profession, Dr. Southwood Smith found in the sciences 
which now demanded his attention, and still more ia 
the structure and functions of organized beings, studies 
congenial to his taste, and for which his previous intel- 
lectual pursuits and habits had prepared him. The con- 
templation of the wonderful processes which constitute 
life, the exquisite mechanism, as far as that mechanism 
can be traced by which they are performed, the sur- 
prising adjustments and harmonies by which in a crea- 
ture like man such diverse and opposite actions are 
brought into relation with each other and made to work 
in subserviency and co-operation, and the Divine object 
of all — the communication of sensation and intelligence 
as the inlets and instruments of happiness, afforded the 
highest satisfaction to his mind. But this beautiful 
world, into whose intimate workings his eye now 
searched, presented itself to his view as a demonstra- 
tion that the Creative Power is inlinite in goodness, 
and seemed to afford, as if from the essential elements 
and profoundest depths of nature, a proof of His love. 
Under these impressions, he wrote, in 1814, during the- 
intervals of his college studies, the " Divine Govern- 
ment," a work which at once brought him into notice 
and established his reputation as an original and elo- 
quent writer. It has now gone through many editions,. 
and has been widely circulated, and read with the deep- 
est interest by persons of all classes and creeds; there 
is nothing sectarian in it ; dealing only with great and 
universal principles, it comprehends humanity and ia 
some respects indeed the whole sensitive and organic 
creation. The style is singularly lucid ; its tone is ear- 
nest, rising frequently into strains of touching and pa- 
thetic eloquence ; a heartfelt conviction of the truth of 
every thought that is put into words breathes through- 



DR. SOUTH WOOD SI\IITH. 55 

out the whole, and a buoyant and youthful spirit per- 
vades it, imparting to it a charm which so rivets the at- 
tention of the reader as to render him in many instances 
unable to put down the book till finished, as if he had 
been engaged in an exciting novel. Had the work been 
written at a maturer age, some of this charm must have 
vanished, and given place to a deeper consciousness of 
the woe and pain that mingle with the joys of the pres- ■ 
ent Slate. But as it is, it has been no unimportant in- 
strument in the hands of those among whom it has- 
chanced to fall, in keeping distinctly before the view 
the greater happiness, as an end, to the attainment of 
"which, pain is so often the direct and only means. 
Many instances are on record of the solace it has com- 
municated to the mourner, and the hope it has inspired 
in the mind when on the brink of despair. While di- 
vines of the church have read and expressed their ap- 
probation of it, it has attracted the attention of some 
of the most distinguished poets of the day : Byron and 
Moore have recorded their admiration of it, and it ap- 
pears to have been the constant companion of Crabbe 
and to have soothed and brightened his last moments. 

After the completion of his medical terms. Dr. South- 
wood Smith spent several years in the practice of his 
profession at a provincial town in the west of England,. 
near his place of birth, and in the midst of a small but 
highly cultivated and affectionate circle of friends, de- 
voting himself with unabated ardour to his favourite 
studies. On his removal to London, he attached him- 
self to one of the great metropolitan hospitals, that he 
might enlarge his experience in his profession. He was 
soon appointed physician to the Eastern Dispensary^ 
and in a few years afterwards, to the London Fever 
Hospital. Called upon by the latter appointment to- 
treat on so large a scale one of the most formidable- 
diseases which the physician has to encounter, he ap- 
plied himself to its study with a zeal not to be abated 
iDy two attacks of the malady in his own person, so se- 
vere that his life on each occasion was despaired of. 
The result of several years' laborious investigation is 
given in his " Treatise on Fever," which was at once 
pronounced to be "one of the most able of the philoso- 
phical works that have aided the advancement of the 
science of medicine during the last half century ;" and 
its reputation has risen with time. It has had a wide 



66 LORD ASHLEY AND 

circulation on the continent, over India and in America, 
in the medical schools of which it has become a text 
book, while in this country high medical authority has 
pronounced it to be '' tlie best work on fever that ever 
flowed from the pen of physician in any age or country." 

Dr. Southwood Smith assisted in the formation of the 
Westminster Review, and wrote the article on "Edu- 
cation" in the first number. For many years he was a 
regular contributor, and it Avas here that his paper on 
the state of the Anatomical Schools first appeared, 
which attracted so much attention that it was re-print- 
■ed in form of a pamphlet, under the title of " The Use 
of the Dead to the Living." In this form it passed 
through several editions, and a copy was sent to every 
member of both houses of Parliament. The evils that 
must necessarily result to the country by withholding 
from^ the medical profession the means of obtaining 
anatomical and physiological knowledge were so clear- 
ly pointed out in this pamphlet, and the perils insepara- 
ble from the permission of such a class as the resur- 
rection-men, (the most horrible results of which were 
soon afterwards actually realised,) so forcibly depicted, 
while at the same time a remedy adequate to meet the 
difficulties of the case was suggested and explained, 
that the Legislature was induced to take up the subject, 
and after appointina: a Committee of Inquiry, to pass 
the existing law, which has put an efl'ectual stop to the 
trade of body-snatching and the horrible crime of Burk- 
ing: but, unfortunately, from a defect in the act, the 
anatomical schools are often placed, though quite un- 
necessarily, in a state of considerable embarrassment 

Dr. Smith laboured with equal earnestness, but less 
success, to obtain a revision of the present regulations 
concerning Quarantine, which he regards as unworthy 
of a country that has made any progress in science, 
having their origin in ignorance and superstition worthy 
of the middle ages; aiming at an object which is alto- 
:gether chimerical, and which, if it had any real it^iist- 
ence, would be just as much beyond human power as 
the control of the force and direction of the winds. Yet 
these regulations are still allowed grievously to embar- 
rass commerce, at the cost of hundreds of thousands of 
pounds annually. 

The articles on "Physiology and Medicine" in the 
early numbers of the Penny Cyclopaedia are from the 



DR. SOUTH WOOD SMITH. 57 

pen of this author, and the success of the treatise on 
*' Animal Physiology," written at the request of the So- 
ciety for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge, suggest- 
ed the idea of treating this subject in a still more elabo- 
rate and comprehensive manner, and led to the publica- 
tion of the " Philosophy of Health." The first words 
of the introduction to this work thus express the com-i. 
prehensive nature of the subject which it embraces : — '; 

" The object of the present work is to give a brief and plain account of 
the structure and functions of the Body, chiefly with reference to health 
and disease. This is intended to be introductory to an account of the con- 
stitution of the Mind, chiefl)' with reference to the development and direc- 
tion of its powers." 

The two volumes already pubhshed, aim at establish- 
ing a series of general rules for health, (the word 
"health" being applied in its widest sense,) by popu- 
larly explaining the nature of the substances of which 
the physical part of man is compounded ; describing the 
various structures and organs of the body, and the dif- 
ferent functions they perform ; and deducing thence the 
laws which the creature is enjoined by the principles of 
its creation to obey. This is merely the basis of a 
higher philosophy, which rising from the physical, shall, 
in regular sequence, proceed to the mental, trace their 
mutual relation and dependence, and endeavour to de- 
duce from the exposition of the nature of each — as far 
as their nature can be comprehended by mortal intelli- 
gence — the rules for the utmost development and pro- 
gression of both. 

The first volume comprises a most interesting view 
of life in all organized bodies, commencing from an 
imperceptible germ, and ascending from the lichen on 
the rock, to man himself. The distinction between the 
tw^o great divisions of organized life, between that 
which only grows — the organic, and that which not on- 
ly grows, but moves and feels — the animal superadded 
to the organic — is traced with the hand of a master. 
Equally masterly is the rapid view of the means adopt- 
ed to render voluntary motion possible ; the complica- 
tion of structure requisite to that one faculty ; the ap-- 
paratus constructed to produce sensation; the eleva- 
tion of every faculty down to the lowest, by the addi- 
tion of each higher faculty; the indispensable necessity 
and uses of pain not only to health, but to life itself; 
and the indication of the processes by which nature 



58 LORD ASHLEY AND 

trains the mind to perceive and think. The concluding 
passage of this portion of the work is one of remarka- 
ble power, in which a general view is exhibited of the 
physiological progress of a human being, from its first 
appearance in the embryo state, until the final extinc- 
tion of life, and the subjection of the inanimate body to 
the material laws which are to decompose it. Exposi- 
tions of the functions of circulation, digestion, and nu- 
trition follow, equally characterized by fullness, and 
conciseness. 

The style of this work is distinguished by terseness 
and simplicity; it would be difficult to find a useless 
word, and very fevv epithets are employed, as though 
the number and variety of ideas to be imparted render- 
ed condensation essential: in the arrangement there is 
great precision, subject after subject arising gradually 
and naturally. Few technical terms are employed, and 
<i full explanation is given to those which are intro- 
<luced. A perfect command of the subject is evinced 
throughout; and its exposition is at once profound and 
simple, calculated alike to instruct the ignorant, and by 
the striking nature of the descriptions and the novelty 
of their applications, to interest even those to whom 
the facts are not new. Much of the matter contained 
in these volumes is original, and even that which is ta- 
ken out of the common treasury of science is disposed 
in a new manner, and exhibited in new relations of 
great interest and importance. Scattered phenomena 
which might be culled out of various works on Anat- 
omy, Physiology, and mental Philosophy, are here 
brought together and systematized ; displayed as a se- 
ries, traced from their germs, and follow^ed onwards to 
their highest manifestations ; arranged so as to show 
their relation to one another, and their influence one 
on the other, thence deducing the means of developing 
the united powers towards their utmost point of pro- 
gression. 

Many felicitous instances of scientific generalization 
and of eloquent description and appeal might be refer- 
red to in exemplification. It has been well said by a 
philosophical reviewer, that the " Natural History of 
I)eath, as a composition, has much of that singular and 
melancholy beauty wherewith a painter of genius 
would invest the personification of mortality." The 
following appeal to mothers has been compared to the 



DR. SOUTilWOOD SMITH. 



5» 



fervid eloquence of Rousseau, which aroused women ta 
a sense of the physical obligations of the maternal char- 
acter ; but here the earnest call is for mental and mor- 
al exertion : — 

" I appeal to every woman whose eye may rest on these pages. I ask of 
you, wliat has ever been done for you to enable you to understand the phys- 
ical and mental constitution of that human nature, the care of which is 
imposed on you ? In what part of the course of your education was in- 
struction of this kind introduced 1 Over how large a portion of your edu- 
cation did it extend 7 Who were your teachers ? What have you profited 
by their lessons 1 What progress have you mnde in the acquisition of the 
requisite information 1 Were you at this moment to undertake the guid- 
ance of a nevv-bornin fant to health, knowledge, goodness, and happiness, 
how would you set about the task t How would you regulate the influence- 
of external agents upon its delicate, tender, and highly irritable organs, in 
such a manner as to obtain from them healthful s.inuilation, and avoid de- 
structive excitement 7 What natural and moral objects would you select aa 
the best adapted to exercise and develope its opening faculties ? What 
feelings would you check, and what chcr.sh ? How would jou excite aims ; 
how would you apply motives? How would you avail yourself of plea- 
sure as a final end, or as the means to some further end 1 And how would 
you deal with the no less formidable instrument of pain? What is your 
own physicd, intellectual, and moral state, as especially fitting you for this 
office ? What is the measure of your own self-control, without a large por- 
tion of which no hiunan being ever yet exerted over the infant mind any 
considerable influence for good ?" 

This earnest passage at once serves to give an idea 
of the style of the work and to explain one of its chief 
aims; and with it the present short account of the 
•' Philosophy of Heahh" must conclude, but not before 
a hope has been expressed that an undertaking so im- 
portant and so well begun, will not much longer be left 
unfinished. 

Dr. Southwood Smith was the friend and physiciaa 
of Bentham. The venerable and unaffected philan- 
thropist, fully appreciating the importance of anatomi- 
cal science, and lamenting the prejudice against dissec- 
tion, gave his own body to Dr. Smith, charging him to 
devote it to the ordinary purposes of science. His 
friend fulfilled his desire, and delivered the first lecture 
over the body — with a clear and unfaltering voice, but 
with a face as while as that of the dead philosopher be- 
fore him. Alive, so cheerful and serene — serene for 
ever now, and nothing more. The lecture was deliver- 
ed on the 9ih of June, 1832, in the Webb-street School 
of Anatomy. Dr. Smith availed himself of the occa- 
sion to give a view of the fundamental principles of 
Bentham's philosophy, and an account of his last mo- 
ments. Most of the particular friends and disciples of 
the deceased were present on the occasion, and his bi- 



60 LORD ASHLEY AND 

ographer has made this lecture the concluding part of 
the Memoir which has been prefixed to the uniform 
Edition of Bentham's works just published. Tl)e head 
and face were preserved by a peculiar process, but the 
latter being found painful in expression, is covered with 
a wax mask admirably executed and a correct likeness. 
The skeleton also was preserved ; and the whole clothed 
in the ordinary dress worn by the philosopher (accord- 
ing to his own express desire) presenting him as nearly, 
as possible as he was while living. Seated smiling in 
a large mahogany case with a glass front, the homely 
figure, with its long snow-white hair, broad-brimmed 
hat, and thick ash-plant walking-stick, resides with Dr. 
Southwood Smith, and may be seen by any one who 
takes an interest in the writings and character of Jere- 
my Bentham. 

Lord Ashley, the eldest son of the Earl of Shaftsbu- 
ry, and member for Dorsetshire, commenced his career 
in that cause with which his public life has become 
identified, by undertaking the charge of Mr. Sadler's 
Factory Bill in the house of Commons. The invention 
of the spinning-jenny and the power-loom not only al- 
tered the whole process of manufacture, but withdrew 
the operatives from their own dwellings, and collected 
them in numbers in great buildings called Factories. 
The invention of. machinery was attended with another 
result ; it created a demand for the comparatively in- 
expensive labour of children, their small fingers being 
found best adapted to work in combmation with it. 
Very young children, of both sexes, were therefore em- 
ployed in great numbers, together with adult labourers, 
and as their servants, and were moreover compelled to 
work the same number of hours whether those amounted 
to twelve, fourteen, or sixteen, or even all night. It was 
alleged that children of tender ages placed under these 
unnatural circumstances were grievously and irrepara- 
bly injured in their physical constitution ; that they were 
cruelly treated by their task-masters ; that their morals 
were early corrupted; that they were growing up in a 
state of absolute ignorance. It was universally admit- 
ted that the efforts which the Legislature had hitherto 
made for their protection had failed, and every existing 
enactment become a dead letter. It was in this state 
of things that Lord Ashley, in 1833, took charge of Mr. 
Sadler's Bill, the object of which was to limit the hours 



DR. SOUTHWOOD SMITH. 61 

of work, of all under eighteen, in Factories, to ten hours 
daily. This was met by the objection that such a 
measure must necessarily put the same limit on the la- 
bour of adults. A Commission was accordingly ap- 
pointed ; first to ascertain the facts of the case as re- 
garded the children, and, secondly, to enquire whether 
it would not be practicable to devise a measure for the 
protection of children without interfering with the lib- 
berty of all the operatives. Fifteen commissioners 
were appointed and divided into five sections, each con- 
sisting of three Commissioners (two civil and one med- 
ical) and of these Mr. Thomas Tooke, Mr. Chadwick, 
and Dr. Southwood Smith, formed the Central Board, 
to direct the inquiry and report the result. Their re- 
port was : — 

" That the children employed in all the principal branches of manufticture 
throughout the kingdom work the same number of hours as the adults; that 
the effects of such labonr, in great numbers of instances, are permanent de- 
terioration of the physical constitution, the production of disease, often 
wholly irremediable, and the exclusion by means of excessive fatigue from 
the means of obtaining education. That children at the ages when they 
suffer these injuries not being free agents, but let out to hire, their wages be- 
ing appropriated by their parents, therefore a case is made out for the inter- 
ference of the legislature in their behalf." 

The Factory Act of 18.33 was founded on this Re- 
port, and four Inspectors and a considerable number of 
Sub-Inspectors were appointed to enforce obedience to 
its enactments. The results are highly important. 

The existing Act which fixes the youngest age at 
which children can be employed, and the extentof their 
hours of labour, and which requires education as a con- 
dition of employment, is (unlike its predecessors) obey- 
ed ; and although the clause in the Bill prepared by the 
Commissioners providing for the erection of schools 
and the payment of teachers, was struck out in the 
House of Lords, on the motion of the Earl of Shafts- 
bury, Lord Ashley's father, yet with all its imperfec- 
tions the present Act haS led to an amelioration in the 
treat^ment and an improvement in the physical condition 
and moral character of this vast juvenile population, 
such as was never before effected by an Act of Parlia- 
ment ; while the benefits resulting from it to all parties, 
the employers no less than ihe employed, are not only 
rapidly multiplying and extending, but are becoming 
more and more the subjects of general acknowledgment 
and gratulation. There is reason to believe that the 
F 



62 LORD ASHLEY AND 

total number employed in factory labour in the United 
Kingdom is little short of 1,000,000.* 

New fields of labour had opened to Lord Ashley at 
every step of his progress. He had already earned the 
honourable designation of the general guardian of the 
children of the poor, as the Lord Chancellor is of the 
children of the rich. He was satisfied that there were 
oppressions and sufferings of an aggravated character, 
and on a large sc«le, in occupations widely different 
from those of the factory, and which required investiga- 
tion the more because the places of work, in which 
some of the most important of these employments are 
carried on, are wholly inaccessible to the public. The 
apprehension inseparable from a mind, at once earnest 
and diffident, that he should fail to elicit the truth, and 
to place it so strongly before the public and the legisla- 
ture, as to command attention and to ensure a remedy 
for any proved grievance, was strongly marked in the 
opening of his speech on the 4th of August, 1840, for 
the appointment of a " Commission of Inquiry into the 
employment of Children in Mines, Collieries, and other 
occupations not regulated by the Factory Acts." 

"It is, Sir," said he, "with feelings somewhat akin to despair, that I now 
rise to bring before this House, the motion of which I have given notice. 
I cannot but entertain misgivings, that I shall not be able to bring under the 
attention of the House this subject, which has now occupied so large a 
portion of my public life, and in which are concentrated in one hour, the 
labours of years. I have long contemplated this effort which I am now 
making ; I had long resolved that, so soon as I could see the Factory chil- 

dien, as it were, safe in harbour, I would undertake a new task 

I am now endeavouring to obtain an inquiry into the actual circumstances 
and condition of another large part of our juvenile popuhition. ... I 
wish," continued he, "to preserve and cherish the physical energies of these 
poor children, and to cultivate and improve their moral part, both of which, 
be they taken separately or conjointly, are essential to the peace, security, 
and progress of the empire. . . . It is instructive to obst^rve, how we 
compel, as it were, vice and misery with one hand, and endeavour to 
repress them with the other; but the whole course of our manufacturing 
system tends to these results ; you engage children from their earliest and 
tenderest years in these long, painful, and destructive occupations; when 
they have approached to manhood, they have outgrown their employ- 
ments, and they are turned upon the world without moral, wiihout profes- 
sional education ; the business they have learned avails them nothing ; to 

* From a Return furnished by Mr. Sanders, one of tiie Factory Inspectors, 
it appears that in his district alone, wljich is by no means one of the 1-trgest 
thetofU number employed in F; ct«>ry labour isi 106,.509. Ainongthese there 
are 45,958 young persons and cliildien coining under the regulations of the 
Factory Act. It appears, further, that while there were before the present 
Act, as far as th*; Inspector could learn, only two schools in his whole dis- 
trict, at which about 200 children may hrivr^ bren educated, the actu"! num- 
ber nt present attending schools is 9310. The F ctory Act has diminish- 
ed the number of young children and increased that of adults 



DR. SOUTHWOOD SMITH. 63 

what can they turn their hands for a maintenance ?— the children, for 
instance, who have been taught to make pins, having reached fourteen or 
fifteen years of age, are unfit to make pins any longer; to procure an hon- 
est livelihood then becomes to them almost impossible; tlie governors of 
prisons will tell you, the relieving officers will tell you, that the vicious 
resort to il under and prostitution ; the rest sink down into a hopeless pau- 
perism. I desire to remove these spectiicles of suffering and oppression 
from the eyes of the poorer classes, or at least to ascertain if we can do so : 
these things perplex the peaceable, and exasperate the discontented ; they 
have a tendency to render capital odious, for wealth is known to them only 
by its oppressions; they judge of it by what they see immediately around 
them; they know but little beyond their own narrow sphere; they do not 
extend their view over the whole surface of the land, and so perceive and 
unders'.and the compensating advanl.iges that wealth and property bestow 
on the community at large. Sir, with so much ignorance on one side, and 
so much oppiession on the other, I have never wondered that perilous 
errors and bitter hatreds have prevailed ; but I have wondered much, and 
been very thankful that they have prevailed so little." 

Lord Ashley concluded by declaring that it was his 
object to appeal to, and excite public opinion, '" for 
where we cannot legislate," said he, " we may exhort; 
and laws may fail where example will succeed." 

"1 must appeal to the Bishops and Ministers of the Church of England, 
nay, more, to the Ministers of every denomination, to urge on the hearts of 
their hearers, ihemiichief and the danger of these covetous and cruel practi- 
ces ; I trust they will not fall short of the zeal and eloquence of a distinguish- 
ed prelate in a neighbouring country, who, in these beautiful and emphatic 
words, exhorted his hearers to justice and mercy: 'Open your eyes,' said 
the Prince Archbii-hop Prim ite of Normandy, 'and behold; parents and 
masters dem md of these young plants to produce fruit in the season of 
blossoms. By excessive and prolonged labour they exhaust the rising sap, 
caring but little that they leave them to veget ite and perish on a withered 
and tottering stem. Poor little children! may the laws hasten to extend 
their protection over your existence. ;inu may postei-ity read with astonish- 
ment, on the front of this fiffe, so satisjird with itself, that in these days of 
progress and discovery, there was needed an iron law to forbid the murder 
of children by excessive labour: ... My grand object is to bring these 
children within re ich of education. I will say, though possibly I may be 
charged with cant and hypocrisy, that I have been bold enough to under- 
take this task, because I must regard the objects of it as beings created, as 
ourselves, by the same Maker, redeemed by the same Savio'jr, nud destined 
to the same immortality; and it is, therefore, in this spirit, and with these 
sentiments, that I now venture to entreat ihe countenance of this House, 
and the co-operation of Her Majesty's Ministers : first to investigate, and 
ultimately to remove, these sad evils, which press so deeply and so extea- 
fcively on such a large and interesting portion of the human race." 

This appeal, distinguished throughout by an earnest 
simplicity of language, was answered by the cordial sup- 
port of the Government, and the immediate appointment 
of a Commission of Inquiry, consisting of a Board of 
Commissioners, whose office it was to visit the districts 
and to report thereon. The field of inquiry prescribed 
by the terms of the Commission, comprehended the 
mines and collieries of the United Kingdom, and all 
trades and manufactures whatever, in which chil- 



64 LORD ASHLEY AND 

dren work together in numbers, not included under the 
Factories Regulation Act. The mass of evidence sent 
up to the Central Board from twenty gentlemen, work- 
ing day and night, in different parts of the country, with 
the utmost energy and without intermission for man> 
consecutive months, speaks for itself. Fortunately the 
Commissioners were men of energy practised in busi- 
ness. The chairman, Mr. Thomas Tooke, who had held 
the same situation in the Factory Commission, possess- 
ed the confidence of the commercial and manufacturing 
portion of the country. Mr. Horner and Mr. Saunders, 
two of the Factory Inspectors, had already spent many 
years in pursuing investigations analagous to those 
which were now to be made ; and Dr. Southwood Smith 
was qualified as a physiologist and physician, to appre- 
ciate the influence of early labour on the physical and 
moral condition of children. But the very extent and 
completeness of the evidence transmitted to the Cen- 
tral Board, would have caused its failure as an instru- 
ment of legislation, but for the manner in which it was 
decided to deal with it. The subject was divided into 
two parts, Mines and Manufactures. The mines were 
subdivided into collieries and metallic mines, and the 
manufactures into the larger branches of industry, 
such as metal-wares, earthenware, glass-making, lace- 
making, hosiery, calico-printing, paper-making, wea- 
ving, &c. 

Those who have closely examined the two small vol- 
umes, into which compass are compressed and admi- 
rably arranged the main facts contained in the enor- 
mous folios, can alone appreciate the amount of labour 
involved in this undertaking, and will not fail to recog- 
nise in the lucid order and condensed style, the hand 
of Dr. Southwood Smith, on whom this portion of the 
labours of the commission principally devolved. He 
did not shrink from the task, though nearly every min- 
ute of the day was absorbed by a fatiguing profession, 
sustained through the long hours taken from rest and 
sleep, by the conviction that the usefulness of this work 
would afford a heart-felt compensation for its labour. 
The anticipation was fully realized. When the Report- 
on Mines was laid on the table of the House, astonish- 
ment and horror were universal. No such outrages on 
humanity had been discovered since the disclosure of 
the treatment of Negro slaves. It was truly said that 



DR. SOUTHWOOD SMITH. 65 

this report resembled a volume of travels in a remote 
and barbarous country, so little had been previously- 
known of the state of things it described. Dark passa- 
ges to seams of coal, scarcely thirty inches in lieight, 
not larger than a good-sized drain, through which chil- 
dren of both sexes, and of all ages, from seven years 
old and upwards, toiled for twelve hours daily, and 
sometimes more, obliged to crawl on " all fours," drag- 
ging after them loaded corves or carts, fastened to their 
bodies by a belt, a chain passing between the legs; — 
infants of four, five, and six years old, carried down on 
their parents' knees to keep the air-doors, sitting in a 
little niche scooped out in the coal, for twelve hours 
daily, alone, in total darkness, except when the corves, 
lighted by their solitary candle, passed along, and some 
of them during the winter never seeing the light of day, 
except on Sunday ; — girls and women hewing coals like 
men, and by the side of men ; — girls and women cloth- 
ed in nothing more than loose trowsers, and these often 
in rags, working side-by-side with men in a state of ut- 
ter nudity ; — girls of tender years carrying on their backs 
along unrailed roads, often over their ankles, and some- 
times up to their knees in water, burdens of coal, weigh- 
ing from f cwt. to 3 cwt., from the bottom of the mine 
to the bank, up steep ladders, " the height ascended 
and the distance along the roads added together, ex- 
ceeding the height of St. Paul's Cathedral ;" married 
women, and women about to become mothers, drag- 
ging or bearing on their shoulders similar'enormous 
loads, up to the very moment when forced to leave this 
" horse-work" to be "drawn up," to give birth to their 
helpless offspring, — themselves as helpless — at the pit's 
mouth, and sometimes even in the pit itself; — boys, of 
seven and eight years old, bound till the age of twenty- 
one apprentices to the colliers, receiving until that age, 
as the reward for their labour, nothing but food, cloth- 
ing, and lodging, working side-by-side with young men 
of their own age, free labourers, the latter receiving 
men^s wages , — boys employed at the steam-engines for 
letting down and drawing up the work-people ; — ropes 
employed for this service obviously and acknowledged- 
ly unsafe ; — accidents of a fearful nature constantly oc- 
curring ; — the most ordinary precautions to guard 
against danger neglected; a collier's chances of immu- 
nity from mortal peril being about equal to those of a 
F2 



66 LORD ASHLEY AND * 

soldier on the field of battle — for ail thisneither the leg- 
islature nor the public were at all prepared, nor were 
they better prepared for the two last conclusions dedu- 
ced by the Commissioners, as the result of the whole 
body of evidence, namely : — 

"That partly by the severity of the labour and the long hours of work, 
and partly through the unhealthy state of the place of work, this employ- 
ment, as at present carried on in ail the districts, deteriorates the physical 
constitution; in the thin-seam mines, more especially, the limbs become 
crippled, and the body distorted; and in general the muscular powers give 
way, and the work-people are incapable of following their occupation, at 
an earlier period of life than is common in other branches of industry. 
That by the same causes, the seeds of p-riinful and mortal diseases are oftea 
sown in childhood and youth; these, slowly but steadily developing tiiem- 
selves, assume a formidable character between the ages of thirty and forty ; 
and each generation of this class of the population is commonly extinct 
soon after lifty." 

When on the 7th of June, 1842, Lord Ashley moved 
for leave to bring in a Bill, founded on this Report, 
there was an unusually large attendance of members. 
After expressing his warm acknowledgments to the late 
administration, "■ not only for the Commission which 
they gave, but for the Commissioners whom they ap- 
pointed, gentlemen who had performed the duties 
assigned them with unrivalled skill, fidelity and zeal," 
he proceeded in an elaborate speech, listened to 
throughout by a silent and deeply attentive House, to 
detail the most important points of the evidence, pre- 
senting such an appalling picture of the physical mis- 
eries and the moral deterioration of large classes of 
the community, that the motion was granted without a 
dissentient voice. Members on every side vied with 
each other in cordial assent and sympathy with the 
measure. The contemporary press echoed the tone ; 
the manner of the speech was deservedly eulogized for 
its freedom from all sickly sentimentalities, useless re- 
criminations, and philanthropic clap-traps; for the way 
in which the startling and impressive facts of the case 
were simply stated and lucidly arranged, and in which 
each was made to bear upon the nature and necessity 
of the projected remedy, while blessings were invoked 
in the name of humanity, on the man by whom this 
was done, and done so well. " The laurels of party," 
it was truly declared, " were worthless, compared with 
the wreath due to this generous enterprize." 

Lord Ashley's Bill proposed a total exclusion of girls- 
and women from the labour of mines and colleries ; a 



DR. SOUTHWOOD SMITH. 67 

total prohibition of male children from this labour, no 
boy being allowed to descend into a mine, for the pur- 
pose of performing any kind of work therein, under 
thirteen years of age ; a total prohibition of apprentice- 
ship to this labour, and a provision that no person, 
other than a man between twenty one and fifty years 
of age, shall have charge of the machinery by which 
the work-people are let down and drawn up the shafts. 

The history of the mutilated progress of this Bill 
through both Houses, has now to be recorded. f 

The first point was unanimously acceded to in the* 
Commons ; the second was altered by the substitution 
of the age of ten, for that of thirteen ; the concession, 
however, being neutralized, as far as practicable, by 
the provision, that no boy under thirteen should work 
on any two successive days ; the third was materially 
altered by the addition of the word " underground," 
thus allowing the collier to take apprentices provided 
he worked them on the surface; the fourth was altered 
by omitting the limitation to fifty, thus permitting the 
lives of all who work in mines, to be placed in the 
hands of aged and decrepid men. 

Thus changed, each change, it will be observed, being 
directly against the interest and safety of the work- 
people, the Bill passed the Commons. In the House 
of Lords, the whole measure was met with a spirit of 
hostility as unexpected as it was unanimous, and alas ! 
successful. It had been forgotten that the mines and 
collieries of the kingdom belong, with very few excep- 
tions, to the great landed proprietors — the same noble 
lords who had now to decide on the fate of the Bill. 
For some time it was impossible to get any member of 
that noble House to- take any charge of the business. 
At length, Lord Devon, from a feeling of shame to 
which so many had showed themselves insensible, vol- 
unteered to do what he could to conduct the Bill 
through its perilous course. In this noble House, even 
the prohibition to work female children, and married 
women, and women about to become mothers, was 
murmured at, but no member ventured to propose an 
alteration of this part of the measure. The clause pro- 
hibiting apprenticeship was expunged, saving that a 
provision was retained that no apprenticeship should 
be contracted under ten years of age, nor for a longer 
period than eight years. The clause limiting the labour 



68 LORD ASHLEY AND 

of boys under thirteen to alternate days, was expunged. 
And the clause regulating the age of the persons that 
work the machinery for conveying the work-people up 
and down the shafts, which the Commons had altered 
on the one hand so as to permit decrepid men to per- 
form this office, the Lords now altered on the other, so 
as to entrust it to boys. 

Early in the following Session, the Commissioners 
presented their second Report on Trades and Manufac- 
tures, drawn up on the same elaborate plan, written 
with the same clearness and calmness, and exhibiting 
in some respects a still more melancholy though not 
so startling a picture of the condition of large classes 
of our industrial population. It discloses in its full 
extent the mischief done to the former Bill by the 
expulsion of the clause prohibiting apprenticeship ; 
for it proves that the oppressions and cruelties perpe- 
trated under this legal sanction in mines and collieries, 
is even exceeded in some trades and manufactures. 
The words of the Report relative to this subject, ought 
to sink deep into the mind and heart of the country. 
After stating that in some trades, more especially those 
requiring skilled workmen, apprentices are bound by 
legal indentures usually at the age of fourteen, and for 
a term of seven years : the Commissioners continue : 

" But by far the greater number are bound without any prescribed legal 
forms, and in almost all these cases they are required to serve their masters, 
at whatever age they may commence their apprenticeship, until they attain 
the age of twenty-one, in some instances in employments in which there is 
nothing deserving the name of s hill to be acquired, and in Other instances in 
employments in which they are taught to make only one particular part of 
the article manufactured ; so that at the end of their servitude they are alto- 
gether unable to make any one article of their trade in a complete state. A 
large proportion of these apprentices consist of orphans, or are the children 
of widnv/s, or belong to the poorest families, and frequently are apprenticed 
by Boards of Guardians. The term of servitude of these apprentices may 
and sometimes does commence as early as seven- years of age, and is often 
passed under circumstances of great hardship and ill-usnge, and under the 
condition that, during the greater part, if not the whole, of their term, they 
receive nothing for their labour beyond food and clothing. This system of 
apprenticeship is most prevalent in the district around Wolverhampton, 
and is most abused by what are called "small masters," persons who are 
either themselves journeymen, or who, if working on their own account, 
work with their apprentices. In- these districts it is the practice among 
some of the employers to engage the services of children by a simple writ- 
ten agieement, on the breach of which the defaulter is liable to be commit- 
ted to jaol, and in fact often is so without regard to age." 

The Report on Wolverhampton states, that " within 
the last four years five hundred and eighty-four males, 
and females, all under age, have been committed to 



DR. SOUTHWOOD SMITH. 69 

Stafford jail for breach of contract." The following 
passage concerning the treatment of the children, com- 
pletes the picture : 

" In the case in which the children are the servants of the workmen, and 
under their sole control, the master apparently knowing nothing about 
their treatment, and certainly taking no charge of it, they are almost always 
roughly, very often harshly, and sometimes cruelly used ; and in the dis- 
tricts around Wolverhampton in particular, the treatment of them is oppres- 
sive and brutal to the last degree." 

Wolverhampton, it will be remembered, is the centre 
of the iron manufactures in South Staffordshire, and the 
■words of this Report in their simple conciseness, lay- 
bare a state of things which, that it should exist at this 
day, just as if no Commission had been established, 
and no facts made known to the public, in the centre 
of a country which calls itself civilized, is an outrage 
to humanity. The descriptions of this district, exhibit 
scenes of actual misery among the children, far surpas- 
sing the inventions of fiction. Here, in the busy work- 
shops, the Assistant- Commissioner saw the poor ap- 
prentice boys at their daily labour ; their anxious faces, 
looking three times their age, on deformed and stunted 
bodies, showing no trace of the beauty and gladness 
of childhood or youth ; their thin hands and long fin- 
gers toiling at the vice for twelve, fourteen, sixteen, 
sometimes more hours out of the twenty-four; yet with 
all their toil, clothed in rags, shivering with cold, half- 
starved or fed on offal, beaten, kicked, abused, struck 
with locks, bars, hammers, or other heavy tools, burnt 
with showers of sparks from red-hot irons, pulled by 
the hair and ears till the blood ran down, and in vain 
imploring for mercy ;— and all this is going on now* 

Why should it go on ? Apprenticeship is not an 
order of Nature. It is an arrangement, good in itself, 
made by the law, and the law should therefore regulate 
it beneficently. The Jiecessity of interfering between 
parents and children has been admitted, and in some 
degree acted upon in the factories, mines, and collie- 
ries. It is equally necessary in trades and maimfac- 
tures; and much more is it necessary to interfere be- 
tween masters and apprentices. The natural instinct 
has even still some power. The mothers do carry their 
over-toiled children to their beds when they are too 

* Reports on Wolverhampton, and other districts, on the Employment of 
Children and Young Persons in the Iron Trades. &c., of South Stafford- 
shire, and the neighbouring parts of Worcestershire and Shropshire. 



70 LORD ASHLEY AND 

tired to crawl to them, — but no one cares for the 
wretched apprentice. He may he down and die when 
his "long day's work" is done, and his master can get 
another, and a sovereign, besides, at the workhouse. 

It is difficult to make an abridgment of the concise 
and graphic descriptions given in these Reports of the 
physical and moral condition of the persons employed 
in the various branches of industry included in the'ln- 
quiry ; and it is the less necessary, because the means 
of information are placed within the reach of all; an 
octavo volume* having been published by direction of 
the Government, at the desire of the House of Com- 
mons, containing verbatim the most important portions 
of the Reports. The individuals composing these clas- 
ses are to be numbered not by thousands, but by mil- 
lions ; yet what is the weighed, the solemn verdict given 
by this Commission as to their moral condition 1 Every 
word has been deeply considered — and should so be 
read. The Commissioners say, in their general con- 
clusion : — 

"That the parents, urged by poverty or improvidence, generally seek 
employment for the children as goon as tliey can earn the lowest amount 
of wages ; paying but little regard to the probable injury of their children's 
health by early labour, and still less regard to the certain injury of their 
minds by early removal from school, or even by the total neglect of their 
education ; seldom, when questioned, expressing any desire for the regula- 
tion of the hours of work, with a view to the protection and welfare of their 
children, but constantly expressing the greatest apprehension lest any legis- 
lative restriction should deprive them of the profits of their children's la- 
bour; the natural parental instinct to provide, during childhood, for the 
child's subsistence, being, in great numbers of instances, wholly extinguished, 
and the order of nature even reversed — the children supportiiig, instead of 
being supported by their parents. 

"That the means of instruction are so grievously defective that in all the 
districts great numbers of children are growing up without any religious, 
moral, or intellectual training; nothing being done to train them to habits 
of order, sobriety, honesty, and forethought, or even to restrain tlieni from 
vice and crime. 

"That there is not a single district in which the means of instruction 
are adequate to the wants of the people, while in some it is insufficient for 
the education of one-third of the population. That as a natural conse- 
quence of this neglect, and of the possession of unrestrained liberty at an 
early age, wlien few are capable of self-government, great numbers of these 
children and young persons acquire in childhood and youth habits which 
utterly destroy their future health, usefulness, and happiness." 

The details forming the basis of these general state- 
ments, — which are cold abstractions, necessarily inca- 
pable of presenting the living action and passion of the 

* " Physical and Moral Condition of the Children and» Young Persons em- 
ployed in Mines and Manufactures. Illustrated by extracts from the Reports 
of the Commissioners." — London : Published for her Majesty's Stationary 
Office, by J. W. Parker, W^est Strand. 1843. 



DR. SOUTHWOOD SMITH. 71 

countless individuals from whom they are derived, — 
exhibit a degree of wide-spread ignorance, vice, and 
suffering, for the disclosure of which the country was 
wholly unprepared. For this national moral evil there 
is no remedy but a national education ; and the presen 
tation of the Report was followed, on the part of Lord 
Ashley, by a motion for " A Moral and Religious Edu- 
cation of the Working Classes." He sustained his 
motion by a speech, in which, after expressing his 
heart-felt thanks to the Commissioners for "an exer- 
cise of talent and vigour never surpassed by any public 
servants," he gave a comprehensive, massive, and most 
impressive summary of the results of their labours. 
Few who were in the House on that night will ever 
forget the effect produced when, urging on his audience 
to consider the rapid progress of time, and the appal- 
ling rapidity with which a child nine years of age, 
abandoned to himself, and to companions like himself, 
is added to the ranks of viciousness, misery, and dis- 
order in manhood, he turned from the Speaker, and 
looking round on those of his own order, exclaimed — 
"You call these poor people improvident and immor- 
al, and so they are ; but that improvidence and immor- 
ality are the results of our neglect, and,' in some mea- 
sure, of our example. Declare this night that you will 
enter on a novel and a better course — that you will 
seek their temporal through their eternal welfare — and 
the blessing of God will rest upon your endeavours ; 
and, perhaps, the oldest among you may live to enjoy 
for himself and for his children the opening day of the 
immortal, because the moral glories of the British Em- 
pire." 

This appeal was met on the part of the Secretary of 
State for the Home Department, Sir James Graham, 
by the answer that he had matured a plan which might 
be regarded as the first effort of Government to intro- 
duce a national system of education. There were 
unquestionably elements of good in the education 
clauses, particularly as they were altered in the course 
of debate, and they might have formed the basis of 
institutions expanding and improving by experience, 
until they were put in harmony with the feelings, and 
became adequate to the wants of the people ; but, uq- 
fortunately, whatever may have been the real inte.«- 
tions of the Minister, the announcement of his plas had 



72 LORD ASHLEY AND 

the effect of exciting in a violent degree the sectarian 
animosities of the people; and after having arrayed, 
from one end of the kingdom to another in desperate 
conflict Churchman against Dissenter, and Dissenter 
against Churchman, and different sections of each 
against all the rest, terminated, not only in the loss of 
any measure for Education, but in the defeat of the 
amendment of the Factory Act, to which the Minister 
had attached his scheme of National Education. Con-t 
sequenily, the evils resulting from ignorance, remain 
as before. The Factory Act will, however, be amen- 
ded. Government announced, on the 6th of February, 
the intention of limiting the labour of children, under 
thirteen, to six hours daily. 

But although the opportunity of making a national 
provision for education has for the present been lost, 
yet the exposure of the total inadequacy of existing 
Institutions for the intellectual and moral training of 
the people, has not been without a useful result. With- 
in the space of a few months after the publication of 
the reports of the "Children's Employment Commis- 
sion," and immediately after the failure of the Govern- 
ment plan of education, the friends of the Established 
Church raised in voluntary contributions an educational 
fund amounting to nearly 200,000/. ; and one denomina- 
tion of Dissenters (the Independents) at their first meet- 
ing, subscribed towards a similar fund upwards of 
17,000/., and pledged themselves to use their utmost 
exertions to increase this sum to 100,000/. in the space 
of five years. The Methodists also have pledged them- 
selves to raise 200,000/. in seven years, and found 700 
schools ; nor is it probable that other bodies of Dissen- 
ters will remain inactive ; so that the people have al- 
ready put to shame the "National Grant of 30,000/.," 
the utmost amount ever yet voted by Parliament for 
the e<lucation of the country — a sum scarcely sufficient 
to defray the expense of one convict ship, or to main- 
tain for a year one single prison ! 

The two commissions on which Dr. Southwood Smith 
has been engaged, have unavoidably turned his mind, 
away from the speculative studies which at one period 
occupied him more exclusively, and have converted 
him from a thinker into a worker. Circumstances 
connected with his profession had long forced upon his 
observation the wretched slate of the dwellings of the 



DR. SOUTHWOOD SMITH. 73 

poor, and the disease, suffering, and death produced by 
the noxious exhalations that arise from the unsewered, 
undrained, and uncleaiised localities into which their 
houses are crowded. "Nature," said he, "with her 
burning sun, her stilled and pent-up wind, her stagnant 
and teeming marsh, manufactures plague on a large 
and fearful scale : poverty in her hut, covered with her 
rags, surrounded with her filth, striving with all her 
might to keep out the pure air, and to increase the heat, 
imitates nature but too successfully; the process and 
the product are the same, the only difference is in the 
magnitude of the result." In the year 1837, this result 
was produced in certain of the metropolitan districts to 
such an unusual extent as to attract the attention of 
the Poor Law Commissioners. They requested Drs. 
Southwood Smith, Arnott, and Kay to investigate the 
cause. The districts assigned to Dr. Smith were White- 
chapel and Bethnal Green, and he adopted the plan of 
writing a literal description of what he saw in his tour 
over these unknown regions. Of the many pictures 
of squahd wretchedness presented, the following may 
serve as specimens : — 

" An open area of about 700 feet in length, and 300 in breadth ; 300 feet 
of which are covered by stagnant water, winter and summer. In the part 
thus submerged, there is always a quantity of putrefyins! animal and vege- 
table matter, the odour of which at the present moment is most offensive. 
An open filthy ditch encircles this place. Into this ditch all the .... 
Nothing can be conceived more disgusting than the appearar<ce; and the 
odour of the effluvia is at this moment most oflensive. Lamb's-nelds is the 
fruitful source of fever to the houses which immediately surround it. and to 
the small streets whicli branch otf from it. Particular houses were pointed 
out to me from which entire families have been swept away, and from 
several of the streets fever is never absent." 

Of St. John Street, a close and densely populated 
place, in which malignant fever has prevailed in almost 
every house, he says — 

" In one room which I examined, eight feet by ten and nine feet high, 
six people live by day and sleep at night; the closeness and stench are 
almost intolerable. . . Alfred and Beckwith Rows, consist of small 
buildings divided into two houses, one back, the other front: each house 
being divided into two tenements, occupied by difi'erent families. These 
habitations are suiTounded by a broad open drain, in a filthy condition. 
Heaps of filth are accumulated in the spaces meant for gardens in front of 
the houses. ... I entered several of the tenements. In one of them, 
on the ground floor, I found six persons occupying a very small room, two 
in bed, ill with fever. In the room above this were two more persons in 
one bed, ill with fever. In this same room a woman was carrying on the 
process of silk-winding. . . Campden-gardens, the dwellings are small 
ground-floor houses: each containing two rooms, the largest about sevea 
feet by nine, the smallest barely large enough to admit a small bed; the 
height about seven feet ; in winter tliese houses are e-xceedingly damp ; the 

G 



74 LORD ASHLEY AND 

windows are very small ; there is no drainage of any kind ; it is close upon 
a marshy district. Often all the members of a family are attacked by (eveTf 
and die one after the other." 

These descriptions can only be compared to Howard's 
account of the " State of Prisons^" fifty years ago. The 
jail fever was then a recognized and prevalent disease ; 
it is now only a subject of history. So may the ty^ 
phus fever of London be fifty years hence. It requires 
only an enlightened legislature to order, and efficient 
officers to enforce known remedies. 

The impression produced by the entire report, por- 
tions of which have now been extracted, led to the 
motion made by the Bishop of London, in the Session 
of 1839, for an extension of the inquiry into the state 
of other towns in the IJnited Kingdom. Early in the 
following Session (1840), Mr. Slaney obtained a Select 
Committee of the House of Commons for enquiring" 
into the " Health of Towns," Dr. Southwood Smith 
was the first witness examined before this Committee, 
who largely quote his " valuable evidence" in their 
Report, and refer the legislature to the important paper 
•which he furnished to them, entitled " Abstract of a 
Report on the prevalence of Fever in Twenty Metro- 
pohtan Unions during the year 1838," which they re- 
printed in their Appendix. 

The urgency of the case had now attracted the notice 
of Government, and in particular had impressed the 
noble Secretary of State for the Home Department^ 
the Marquis of Normanby ; but like many others, being 
unable to dismiss a doubt whether there vk^ere not some 
exaggerations in these descriptions, he resolved to 
verify their correctness by a personal inspection of the 
districts in question. He accordingly accompanied 
Dr. Southwood Smith in a visit to Whitechapel and 
Bethnal Green, and was so deeply affected by what he 
saw, that he declared his instant conviction, that " so 
far from any exaggeration having crept into the de- 
scriptions which had been given, they had not conveyed 
to his mind an adequate idea of the truth ;" as indeed 
no words can do. Lord Ashley afterwards performed 
the same painful round in company with Dr. Smith, 
and expressed himself in a similar manner.* 

* These statements are strictly authentic. They went privately, and 
unattended, into the most squalid and Jiidcous abodes of filth, and misery, 
and vice, and might well express themselves strongly in public after what 
they witnessed.— Ed. 



DR. SOUTH WOOD SMITH. 75 

111 the Session of 1S41, Lord Normanby introduced 
into Parliament his Bill for the " Drainage of Build- 
ings," and in his speech on moving the second reading 
of the Bill on the 12th of February, he acknowledged 
the services of Dr. Southwood Smith, in the following 
terms. " I cannot allude to them," he said, " without 
at once expressing my obligations to that indefatigably 
benevolent gentleman for much useful information 
which I have derived from him, with whom I have had 
the satisfaction of much personal communication on 
this subject." The principal provisions of this Bill re- 
garded the drainage of houses, the regulation of the 
width of lanes and alleys, and the form and conve- 
niences of dwellings. The Bishop of London warmly 
supported the measure : — " As presiding over the spir- 
itual interests of the metropohs, he felt deeply inter- 
ested in a Bill which he was satisfied would so mate- 
rially affect them : and being thoroughly convinced 
that the physical condition of the poor teas intirnately con- 
nected iviih their moral and religious state, and that the two 
exerted a mutual influence upon each other, he thankfully 
hailed the present measure as the first step towards an 
elevation of that class of the community in the scale 
of social comfort and order." Lord Ellenborough fol- 
lowed in the same spirit : — " It is idle," said he, " to 
build churches, to erect school-houses, and to employ 
clergymen and schoolmasters, if we do no more. Our 
first object should be to improve the physical condition 
of the poor labourer, — to place him in a position in 
which he can acquire self-respect ; above all things to 
give him a home." 

But before this measure had passed, there was a dis- 
solution of Parliament, and a change in the administra- 
tion. The present ministers, however, have not ne- 
glected a subject in v/hich the former Government took 
so deep an interest ; but have appointed a Commission 
of Inquiry into the state of large towns and populous 
districts, with a view, chiefly, to report on remedies. 
In an extended examination before these Commission- 
ers, Dr. Southwood Smith states that the disease for- 
merly described by him, still continues, and with in- 
creasing virulence ; that a new epidemic is now ravaging 
the metropolis, far more extensive and fatal than the 
preceding; that the poorer classes in their neglected 
districts, are still exposed to causes of disease, vsuffer- 



76 LORD ASHLEY AND 

ing, and death which are peculiar to them, and the 
malignant influence of wHich is steady, unceasing, and 
sure. His words are too terrible to need any com- 
ment ; — 

" The result," he says, " is tlie same as if twenty or thirty thousand of 
these people were annually taken out of their wretched dwellings and put 
to death, the actual fact bein? that they are allowed to remain in them and 
die. I am now speaking of what silently, but surely, takes place every 
year in the metropolis alone, and do not include in this estimate the num- 
bers that perish from these causes in the other great cities, and in the towns 
and villages of the kingdom. It has been stated that ' the annual slaughter 
in England and Wales, from preventible causes, of typhus fever, which at- 
tacks persons in the vigour of life, is double the amount of what was suflered 
by the allied armies in the battle of Waterloo.' — This is no exaggerated 
statement; this great battle against our people is every year fought and 
won ; and yet few take account of it, partly for the very reason that it takes 
place every year. However ap])alling the picture presented to the m'w.d by 
this statement, it may be justly regarded as a literal expression of the truth. 
I am myself convinced from what I constantly see of the ravages of this 
disease, that this mode of putting the result does not give an exaggerated 
expression of it. Indeed the most appalling expression of it would be the 
mere cold statement of it in figures." 

In conclusion, Dr. Smith enforced in earnest lan- 
guage, the consideration that this whole class of evils 
is remediable ; that it does not belong to that descrip- 
tion of evil which is mingled with good in the conditions 
of our being, but to that much larger sum of suffering 
which is the consequence of our own ignorance and 
apathy ; — 

"No Government," said he, "can prevent the existence of poverty; no 
benevolence can reach the evils of extreme poverty under the circumstances 
which at present universally accompany it: but there is ground of hope 
and encouragement in the thought that the most painful and debasing of 
those circumstances are adventitious, and form no necessary and inevitable 
part of the condition of that large class of ever>- community which must 
earn their daily bread by their manual labour. These adventitious circum- 
stances constitute the hardest part of the lot of the poor, and tliese, as I 
have just said, are cnpable of being prevented to a very large extent. The 
labours of a single individual, I mean those of the illustrious Howard, have 
at length succeeded in removing exactly similar evils, though somewliat more 
concentrated and intense, froui our prisons ; they are at least etpially capa- 
ble of being removed from the dwelling houses and work-places of the peo- 
ple. Here there is a field of beneficent labour which falls legitimately 
within the scope of the legislator, and which is erjually within that of the 
philanthropist, affording a common ground, beyond the arena of party strife, 
in the culture of which all parties may unite with the absolute certainty 
that they cannot thus labour without producing some good result, and that 
the good produced, whatever may be its amount, must be unmixed good." 

Dr. Smith is now engaged with Lord Ashley and 
other influential and benevolent men, in the formation 
of an Association for improving the dweUings of the 
industrious classes, by the erection of comfortable, 
cleanly, well-drained and ventilated houses, to be let 
to families in sets of rooms, with an ample supply of 



DR. SOUTHWOOD SMITH. 77 

water on each floor; a fair return for the capital in- 
vested being secured. Eleemosynary relief forms no 
part of the undertaking, as tending to destroy the inde- 
pendence of those whom it is designed to benefit. The 
association has fully matured its plans, and will endea- 
vour practically to show by model-houses what may 
be done by combination to lessen the expensiveness of 
the dwellings of the poor, and to increase their heaith- 
fulness and comforts. 

Though the sanatory condition of the working classes 
has been the especial object of Dr. Southwood Smith 
of late years, he has not forgotten the wants of the 
middle classes in the season of sickness. These are 
not at first sight so obvious; but there are circum- 
stances which have never been sufficiently considered, 
that place many, whose station in life removes them 
above the evils of poverty, in a worse condition when 
overtaken by disease than the poor who can obtain ad- 
mission into the hospitals. Numbers of the middle 
classes annually leave their homes and families and 
flock to London, as to a common centre, to find em- 
ployment, or to complete their education. Others 
resort to it from distant parts of the country for medi- 
cal or surgical advice. Strangers and foreigners con- 
stantly visit it. When attacked by disease, — a close 
and comfortless lodging in a noisy street, with no bet- 
ter attendance than the already over-tasked servant of 
all work, or a landlady, w^ho begins to dread infection, 
or the non-payment of her rent, — is the lot of many a 
dehcately minded and sensitive person in the pain of 
fever or inflammation, with all the desolation of the 
feeling of absence from home and friends. 

Out of a sympathy with such suff'erers, arose in Dr. 
Smith's mind the idea of founding an institution on the 
principles of the great clubs, arranged with every re- 
quisite for a place of abode in sickness, and provided 
with regular medical officers and nurses ; the principle : 
of admission being, as in the case of the clubs, a cer- 
tain yearly subscription, and a fixed weeklj^ payment 
during residence in it. Such institutions are not un- 
common on the continent, though, until the present 
time, none have existed in this country. 'J'hat origi- 
nated by Dr. Southwood Smith, under the name of the 
"Sanatorium," was opened in March, 1842, at Devon- 
•shire-place House, in the New Road. The house is 
G2 



78 LORD ASHLEY AND 

well calculated for an experimental attempt, but is not 
sufficiently large to carry out the purposes which 
he contemplated. These would extend to suites of 
rooms, kept at a regular temperature for consump- 
tive cases, and to a separate building for fever cases, 
which are now totally excluded. It appears only to 
want greater publicity to attain its full scope of useful- 
ness ; but unless supported by the class for whom it is 
designed it cannot be maintained at all. That such a 
club is certain to be well supported at some period not 
far distant, we can plainly see ; but the attempt may be 
premature. Its founder — deriving no personal advan- 
tage from the design, but devoting much time and la- 
bour to its advancement — has rested its claim to public 
support simply on the ground, that, as when the middle 
and higher classes combine to found public schools and 
colleges, and to build and endow churches, they solicit 
the contributions of the rich and benevolent because 
no new thing, however excellent in itself, or however 
affluent in the means of securing its ultimate indepen- 
dence and prosperity, can be set on foot without some 
capital ; so this institution appeals to the public for 
assistance, to enable it to mitigate suffering, to shorten 
the duration of disease, and to save life. The Bank of 
England, a.nd the large and inlluential merchants houses 
have seen the good of the undertaking, and have con- 
tributed largely to promote it ; nor should we omit to 
notice in particular the strenuous exertions of Mr, 
Thomas Chapman, the Chairman of the Sanatorium 
Committee. 

Amidst his many arduous and apparently endless la- 
boiu-s, some words of encouragement should be address- 
ed to Dr. Southwood Smith, who in his private station 
devotes himself to the diffusion of philosophical truth, 
and to the instruction of the people in some of the most 
practically interesting and least understood parts of 
knowledge. He has described for them, the wonderful 
structures that form the outward and visible machinery 
of life, and the still more wonderful results of its action 
— the processes that constitute the vital functions. He 
has shown the brighter portion of the height and depth 
of our human nature in the Sources of Happiness, and 
has proved that " in the entire range of the sentient 
creation, without a single exception, the higher the or- 
ganized structure, the greater the enjoyment to which 



DR. SOUTIIWOOD SMITH. 79 

it ministers and in which it terminates." He has so ex- 
pounded the philosophy of Pain, as to communicate to 
the mourning and desponding, heart and hope, and has 
taught in the noblest sense the uses of adversity. He 
has still to deduce from the action of physical agents 
on living structures the laws of health, and to expound 
the intellectual and moral constitution based on the 
physical and growing out of it; without a knowledge 
of which, neither the mother nor the educator can 
avoid the most pernicious errors, nor ultimately reach 
their goal. There are minds and hearts that thank him 
for what he has already accomplished, and that anxious- 
ly await the completion of his work. 

By his public labours Dr. Smith has awakened the 
attention of the people at large, and of the legislature, 
to those physical causes of suffering, disease, and pre- 
mature death, which, while they afflict the whole com- 
munity, press with peculiar severity on the poorer 
classes ; and has shown not only that these causes are 
removable, but the means by which human wisdom and 
energy may certainly succeed in removing them. And 
he is peculiarly fitted to render services to the com- 
munity on this important subject, in consequence of his 
intimate acquaintance with that dreadful train of dis- 
eases which are entailed on humanity by our inatten- 
tion to removing the causes of the febrile poison. 

Lord Ashley is yet young, and few men have before 
them a more noble, or more successful career. He has 
proved that he possesses the qualities requisite for the 
performance of the mission to wiiich he has felt the 
vocation. He is not only intellectual, but possessed 
of the greatest industry, perseverance, and confidence 
in his cause, yet diffident of himself from the very 
depth of his feeling concerning it ; not wanting in firm- 
ness, yet candid and conciliating, and though earnest 
even to enthusiasm, tempering and directing the im- 
pulses of zeal by a sober and sound judgment. His 
singleness of purpose, his unquestioned sincerity and 
honesty, his diligence in collecting facts, his careful 
sifting, lucid arrangement, and concise and candid ex- 
position of them, and his plain unaffected language and 
unpretending address, have secured him the deeply re- 
spectful attention even of the House of Commons. 
Sustained in his appeals to that difficult assembly by 
the profound consciousness that the cause he advocates 



80 LORD ASHLEY, ETC. 

must engage on its side the sympathies of our common 
humanity, on which he throws himself with a generous 
confidence, he often produces the highest results of elo- 
quence. He has already calmed the fears of the capi- 
talists; conciliated the Government; engaged the co- 
operation of the Legislature ; placed under the protec- 
tion of the Law the children of the factories ; placed 
tinder the protection of the Law the still more helpless 
t^hildren doomed to the mines and collieries ; and to the 
female children and women, heretofore confined therein, 
he has said — "You are free, and shall do the work of 
beasts in the attitude of beasts, no more." Lord Ash- 
ley has still to emancipate apprentices; to obtain a 
general registration of accidents ; to improve the local- 
ities and dwellings of the poor; and to give the com- 
pensating benefit of education to those whose early 
years are spent in labour. Because the first attempts 
to accomplish these great objects have failed, let no 
evasions, obstacles, delays, discourage him, nor let 
him — 

" Bate a jot, — 
Of heart or hope ; but siill bear up and steer 
Right onward." 



THOMAS INGOLDSBY. 



POISON IN JI 



At the conclusion of the majority of the " Ingoldst)y^ 
Legends," there are verses entitled " Moral ;" and this 
may have been considered by some as a very advan- 
tageous addition to productions which have had so ex- 
tensive a sale, and consequently so extensive an influ- 
ence upon the minds of particular classes of readers. 
At the end of the " Legend of a Shirt" there occurs the 
following, — 

Moral. 
"And now for some practical hints from the story 
Of Aunt Fan's mishap, which I've thus laid before ye; 
For, if rather too gay 
I can venture to say 
.1 fine vein of moralitij is, in each lay 
Ol my primitive Muse the distinguishing trait!'" — ^nd Series. 

Now, either this is meant to be the fact; or it is not. 
If meant as a fact, it will be the business of this paper 
to display what sort of morality these popular legends 
contain. But it is not seriously meant ! — the author is 
"only in fun!" Very well; then the sort of fun in 
which he abounds shall be displayed, together with the 
" fine vein of morality" which it is to be presumed his 
Muse does not contemplate. 

The story of " Nell Cook," (second series) is very 
clearly and graphically told in rhyme. Nelly is the 
cook- maid of a portly Canon, a learned man with " a 
merry eye." Nelly, besides being an excellent cook, 
is also a very comely lass, and the two-fold position 
she holds in the private establishment of the Canon is 
sufficiently apparent. In this merry condition of gas- 
tronomical affairs there arrives " a lady gay" in a coach 
and four, whom the Canon presses to his breast as his 
Niece, gives her his blessing, and kisses her ruby lip. 
Nelly, the mistress cook, looks askew at this, suspect- 
ing they were " a little less than 'kin, and rather more 
than kind." The gay Lady remains feasting with the 
Canon in his house, quaffing wine, and singing Bobbing 



'82 THOMAS INGOLDSBY. 

Joan! The cook becomes jealous of the clergyman, 
hates the assumed Niece, and hits upon a plan for dis- 
covering the real truth of the relationship. She hides 
the poker and tongs in the Lady's bed ! The said uten- 
sils remain there unheeded during six weeks — and the 
primitive Muse with " a fine vein of morality" says she 
does not know where the Lady took her rest all that 
time ! To be brief: INelly puts poison into her cook- 
er)'^ — the bell rings for prayers — the Canon does not 
come — cannot be found. They search, however, and 
eventually breaking open the door of a bed-chamber, 
they find the Canon lying dead upon the bed, and his 
*' Niece" upon the floor, dead also. The black, swollen, 
livid forms, are described ; and the Prior then says 
" Well ! here's a pretty Go !" "When the assumed re- 
lationship of the parties is mentioned in the " sacred 
fane," the Sacristan " puts his thumb unto his nose, and 
spreads his fingers out I" It may now be fairly as- 
sumed — with submission — that the Ingoldsby Muse is 
not serious, but only in fun — in fact that she is " rather 
too gay." To proceed, therefore, with the sequel of 
this extremely droll story. 

The monks, or somebody employed by them, as it 
seems, seize upon Nelly, and taking up a heavy paving 
stone near the Canon's door, bury her alive under it. 
And, — 

" I've been told, lliat moan and groan, and fearful wail and shriek 
Came from beneath that paving stone for nearly half a week— 
For three long days, and three long nights, came forth those sounds of fear ; 
Then all was o'er — they never more fell on the listening year !" 

Excellent fun ! — buried alive ! — moans and shrieks 
for three days and nights ! — really this fine vein of mor- 
ality will be the death of us ! 

But these things are not meant to be pleasant. This 
is meant to be serious. It certainly looks very like that. 

Li process of years three masons take up the heavy 
stone, and underneath it, in a sort of dry well, they dis- 
cover a fleshless skeleton. This also looks very se- 
rious. But presently we shall find that horror and lev- 
ity are exquisitely blended — the " smiles and the tears," 
as it is beautifully said by some admirers, in extenua- 
tion. For " near this fleshless skeleton" there lies a 
small pitcher, and a " mouldy piece of kissing-ciust !" 

Here it may truly be said that Life and Death meet 
in horrible consummation. It is awfully funny indeed ! 



THOMAS INGOLDSBY. 83 

Under the head of " Moral," at the end, all morality- 
is evaded by silly common-place exhortations, intend- 
ed to pass for humour, — such as cautioning " learned 
Clerks" not to " keep a pretty serving-maid ; " and 
" don't let your Niece sing Bobbing Joan,-'' and " don't 
eat too much pie !" — poisoned pie. 

Here is another of these fine veins of a Muse who 
"poisons in jest." A learned Clerk — the clergy are 
'specially favoured with prominently licentious positions 
in these horrible pleasantries — a learned Clerk comes 
to visit the wife of Gengulphus in his absence.* They 
eat, and drink, hold revels ; the " spruce young Clerk" 
finds himself very much at home with " that frolick- 
some lady:" and then — having placed every thing quite 
beyond doubt, — the primitive Muse leaves a blank with 
asterisks, as if she were too delicate to say more. 
During one of their festivities the husband, Gengulphus, 
returns from a pilgrimage. The learned Clerk, the 
spruce young divine, is concealed by the wife in a clos- 
et, and she then bestows all manner of fond attentions 
upon her weary husband, whose " weakened body" is 
soon overcome by some strong drink, and he falls into 
a sound sleep. The young divine then comes out of 
the closet, and assists the wife in murdering Gengul- 
phus, by smothering and suffocation, all of which is re- 
lated with the utmost levity. After this, they deliber- 
ately cut up the corpse. 

" So the Clerk and the Wife, they each took a knife, 
And ttie nippers that nipped the loaf-sugar for tea; 

'W^ith the edges and points they severed the joints 
At the clavicle, elbow, hip, ankle, and luiee." 

Having dismembered him " limb from limb," cutting 
off his hands at the wrists, by means of the great sug- 
ar-nippers, they determine upon throwing his head 
down the well. Before doing this, however, they cut 
off his long beard, and stuff it into the cushion of an 
arm-chair, all of which is laughably told. Then, the 
Muse does not mean to be serious 1 — this is not intend- 
ed as an account of a murder done, or anything beyond 
a joke. Read the next stanza. 

" They contrived to pack the trunk in a sack. 
Which they hid in an osier bed outside the town, 

The Clerk bearing arms, legs, and all on his back, 
As the late Mr. Greenacre served Mrs. Brown." 

Exactly — this is the point at issue — here is the direct 
* See "Gengulphus," 3st Series. 



'84 THOMAS INGOLDSBY. 

clearly-pronounced comparison with an actual horror 
made palpable beyond all dispute. As did Greenacre, 
in like manner did this spruce young Clerk ! No pan- 
tomime murders, no Christmas gambol burlesques — but 
the real thing is meant to be represented to the imag- 
ination. Here is, indeed a specimen of a Muse being 
" rather too gay," and upon a very unusual occasion 
for merriment. Subsequently the story becomes pre- 
ternatural, after the manner of a monkish legend, vari- 
egated with modern vulgarisms, and finally the wife 
seats herself upon the cushion which contains her 
murdered husband's beard, and the cushion sticks to 

her 1 What follows cannot be ventured in prose. 

The " Moral" at the end, is not very symphonious ; but 
in the usual twaddling style, affecting to be humorous — 
" married pilgrims don't stay away so long," and " when 
you are coming home, just write and say so ;" learned 
Clerks " stick to your books" — " don't visit a house 
■when the master's from home" — " shun drinking ;" and 
"gay ladies allow not your patience to fail." A fair 
average specimen of the beautiful concentrated essence 
of that " fine vein of morality" which runs, or rather, 
gutters, through these legends. 

In the Legend of Palestine (second series) which is 
called "The Ingoldsby Penance" (') the knight, who has 
gone to the holy wars, leaving his wife at Ingoldsby 
Hall, intercepts a letter, carried by a little page, from his 
wife to a paramour with whom she has "perhaps been 
a little too gay," as the holy Father remarks — wherebj'" 
we discover what meaning is attached to those words. 
Sir Ingoldsby gives the little page a kick, which sends 
him somewhere, and the child is apparently killed on 
the spot. The paramour turns out to be the revered 
Prior of Abingdon! Sir Ingoldsby forthwith cuts off 
the reverend man's head. His account of the style in 
which he murdered his wife, the lady Alice, must be 
told in his own words : — 

" And away to Ingoldsby Hall I flew ! 

Dame Alice I found — 

She sank on the ground — 
I twisted her neck till I twisted it round ! 
With jib r„ and jeer, and mock, and sroff, 
I twisted it on— till I twisted it off!" ' 

Serious or comic 1 Surely this cannot be meant as 
a laughable thing, but as a dreadful actual revenge ] At 



THOMAS INGOLDSBY. 85 

any rate, however, it is laughed at, and the very next 
couplet institutes a paraphrastic comparison with Hump- 
ty Dumpty who sat on a wall 1 " All the king's doc- 
tors, and all the king's men," sings the primitive Muse — 
who is sometimes " rather too gay" — " can't put fair 
Alice's head on agen /" It must by this time have be- 
come perfectly apparent that the only possible attempt 
at justification of such writings must be on the score of 
some assumed merit in the unexampled mixture of the 
ludicrous and the revolting — the "exquisite turns" — 
" the playfulness" of these bloody fingers. 

The legitimate aim of Art is to produce a pleasura- 
emotion ; and through this medium, in its higher walks, 
to refine and elevate humanity. The art which has a 
mere temporary excitement and gratification of the ex- 
ternal senses as its sole object, however innocent the 
means it employs, is of the lowest kind, except one. 
That one is the excitement of vicious emotions, unre- 
deemed by any sincere passion or purpose, whether 
justified or self-deluding; and there are no emotions so 
vicious and so injurious as those which tend to bring the 
most serious feelings and conditions of human nature 
into ridicule and contempt ; to turn the very body of 
humanity, " so fearfully and wonderfully made," inside 
out, by way of a jest, and to represent " battle, murder, 
and sudden death," not as dreadful things from which 
■we would pray that all mankind might be " delivered," 
but as the richest sources of drollery and amusement. 

There is perhaps no instance of extensive popularity 
without ability of some kind or other, even when the 
popularity is of the most temporary description ; and 
that the " Ingoldsby Legends" possess very great talent, 
of its kind, should never be denied. It will be treated 
in due course. Their merit is certainly not icit, in its 
usual acceptation; and their humour can scarcely be 
regarded as legitimate, being continually founded upon 
trifling with sacred, serious, hideous, or otherwise for- 
bidden subjects, beyond the natural region of the comic 
muse, and often beyond nature herself. 

It will be acknowledged on all sides that the cheapest 
kind of wit, or Immour, or whatever passes current for 
either, is that which a man finds ready-made. Who- 
ever is the first to appreciate and display a certain quan- 
tity of this, in a new, and attractive, or striking shape, 
is pretty sure of finding a large audience. To appeal 
H 



86 THOMAS INGOLDSBY. 

to established jokes, and slang sayings, and absurd 
events and characters, all well known to everybody, is- 
one means of amusing a large and by no means very 
select class : ghost stories and tales of preternatural 
wonder, if at all well told, are also sure of exciting a 
considerable interest, so long as the imagination retains 
its influence as a powerful faculty of the human mind ^ 
and, though last, it is to be feared not least, there is a 
very large class extremely disposed to be pleased with 
a clever dalliance amidst unseemly subjects and stories 
— a liquorish temerity which continually approaches the 
very verge of verbal grossness, and escapes under the 
insinuation — in fact, an ingenious " wrapping up" of all 
manner of unsightly, unsavoury, and unmentionable 
things. 

The quantity of common-place slang in these Legends 
is a remarkable feature. Very much of it is of a kind 
that was in vogue in the time of our fathers and grand- 
fathers, such as " Hookey Walker — apple-pie order — a 
brace of shakes — cock-sure — meat for his master — rais- 
ing the wind — smellmg a rat — up to snuff — going snacks 
— -little Jack Horner," &c. ; and there is no want of the 
slang of present days, such as — " done brown — a shock- 
ing bad hat — like bricks — coming it strong — heavy wet 
— a regular guy — right as a trivet — a regular turn up — 
tipping a facer — cobbing and fibbing — tapping the claret 
— a prime set to !" &c. These choice morsels are all 
introduced between inverted commas to mark them as 
quotations ; as if this rendered them a jot the more fit 
to illustrate murderous tales ; or as if their dull vulgari- 
ty was excusable because it v/as not original. To use 
slang with impunity requires great tact, and good taste, 
and invention, and the finest humour ; — inverted com- 
mas do nothing. 

Many of the tales end with some very fusty old say- 
ings, presented to the eye all in capital letters : — " Don't 

HALLO BEFORE YOU'RE QUITE OUT OF THE WOOD ; NEVER 
BORROW A HORSE YOU DOn't KNOW OF A FRIEND ; LOOK AT 
THE CLOCK ; WHO SOPS WITH THE DeVIL SHOULD HAVE A 

LONG SPOON," &c., each of which is intended as a rare 
piece of humour to wind up with. The stanzas also 
display in capital letters such excellent new wit as — 
" Keep your handkerchief safe in your pocket ; little 

PITCHERS have LONG EARS *, BEWARE OF THE RhINE, AND 
TAKE CARE OF THE RhINO ; I WISH YOU MAY GET IT ; YOU 



THOMAS INGOLDSBY. 87 

can't make a silk purse of a sow's ear ; A BIRD IN THE 

HAND IS WORTH TWO IN THE BUSH !" &c. As for the dis- 
tiches and stanzas at the end of most of the legends 
under the old-fashioned head " moral," they are all 
written upon the same principle of arrant twaddling 
advice, the self-evident pointlessness of which is in- 
tended to look like humour, and are humiliating to com- 
mon sense. 

Amidst all these heavy denunciations it is " quite a 
relief" to be able to admire something. In freedom 
and melody of comic versification, and in the originality 
of compound rhymes, the " Ingoldsby Legends" surpass 
-everything of the kind that has appeared since the days 
of Hudibras and of Peter Pindar. The style is occa- 
sionally an indifferent imitation of the old English bal- 
lads ; but this method of compound rhyming is of a kind 
Avhich may be regarded, if not as the discovery of new 
powders in the English language, at least as an enlarge- 
ment of the domain of those powers. The legends 
contain in almost every page the best possible illustra- 
tion of the true principle of rhyming, which the best 
poets, and the public, have ahvays felt to depend solely 
upon a good ear, and (more especially in the English 
language) to have nothing whatever to do with the eye 
and the similarity of letters — an absurd notion which 
the majority of critics, to this very day, entertain, and 
display. These legends are, in this respect, philologi- 
cal studies, indisputable theoretically, and as novel as 
they are amusing in practice. The most incongruous 
and hitherto unimaginable combinations become thor- 
oughly malleable in the Ingoldsby hand, and words of 
the most dissimilar letters constitute perfect rhymes, sin- 
gle, double, and triple. Moreover, these instances are 
not a few ; they are abundant, and almost in every page, 

" His features, and phiz awiy 
Bhovv'd so much misery, 
And so like a dragon he 
Look'd in his agony," &c. 

Ingoldsby Xe^e?(rfs, '2nd Series. 
" A nice little boy held a golden ewer, 
Emboss'd and fiU'd with water as pure 
As any that flows between Rheims and Namur." — 1st. Series. 

" Extremely annoyed by the ' tarnation whop,' as it 
's call'd in Kentuck, on his head and its opposite, 
Bloeg show'd fight 
W^hen he saw, by the light 
Of the flickering candle, that had not yet quite 
Burnt down in the socket, though not over bright, 



88 THOMAS INGOLDSBY. 

Certain dark-colour'd stains, as of blood newly spilt. 
Revealed by the dog's having scratch'd off the quilt. 
Which hinted a story of horror and guilt ! 

'Twas ' 7(0 mistake' — 

He was ' wide awake' 
In an instant ; for, when only decently dnitik, 
Nothing sobers a man so completely as 'funk.'' " — Ibid. 

" From his finger he draws 
His costly turquoise ; 
And, not thinking at all about little Jackdaws," &c. — Ibid. 

"Both Knights of the Golden Fleece, high-bom Hidalgoes, 
With whom e'en the King himself quite as a ' pal' goes." 

2nc{ Series- 
" Or if ever you've witness'd the face of a sailor 
Return'd from a voyage, and escaped from a gale, or 
Poetici ' Boreas' that 'lilustering railer,' 
To find that his wife, when he hastens to hail her 
Has just run away with his cash — and a tailor," &c. — Ibid 

All these rhymes are perfect rhymes to the ear, which 
is the only true judge. Let critics of bad ear, or no-ear, 
beware how they commit themselves in future by at- 
tempting to make correct rhyming a matter of literary^ 
eye-sight. These examples bring the question to a 
test more finally than any argument or disquisition 
could do. 

"The Most Reverend Don Garcilasso Q,uevedo 
Was just at this time, as he 
Now held the Primacy," &c. — Ibid. 

" A long yellow pin-a-fore 
Hangs down, each chin afore," &c. — Ibid. 

Which it seems of a sort is 

To puzzle our Cortes, 
And since it has quite flabbergasted this Diet, I 
Look to vour Grace with no little anxiety, &c. 

* * * ■ * 

So put your considering cap on — we're curious 
To learn your receipt for a Prince of Asturias. 

* * * * 

So distinguish'ed a Pilgrim— especially when he 
Considers the boon will not cost him one penny. 

* * * * 

Since your Majesty don't like the pease in the shoe, or to 
Travel — what say you to burning a Jew or two ? 

Of all cookeries, most 

The Saints love a roast ! 
And a Jew's, of all others, the best dish to toast, &.c. — Ibid 

The rest of the rascals jump'd on him, and Burk'd him, 
The poor little Page, too, himself got no quarter, but 

Was serv'd the same way. 

And was found the next day 
With his heels in the air, and his head in the water-butt 

1st Series. 

There is a class of people, who, endeavouring to re- 



THOMAS INGOLDSBY. 89 

duce poetry to the strict laws of the understanding, de- 
feat themselves of every chance of being permitted to 
understand poetry : there is, how-ever, a much larger 
class, who, in reading verse of any kind, abandon all 
use whatever of the understrinding. The specimens of 
these admirable and masterly thymes must not render 
us insensible to the hideous levity of the pictures they 
continually present to the imagination. Thrown off 
our guard by the comicalities of the style, such things 
may be passed over with a laugh the first time (they 
have been so, too generally) ; but a second look pro- 
duces a shudder, recollectuig, as we do, the previous 
allusion to Greenacre, and knowing that these horrors 
are not meant for pantomime. 

In making some remarks on " the diseased appetite 
for horrors," Mr. Fonblanque has this passage — 

" The landlord upon whose premises a minder is committed, is now-a- 
days a made man. The place becomes a show in the neighbourhood as the 
scene of a fair. The barn in which Maria Martin was murdered by Corder, 
■was sold in tooth-picks ; the hedge through which the body of Mr. Weare 
was dragged, was purchased by tlie inch ; Bishop's house bids fair to go off 
in tobacco-stoppers and snuff-boxes, and the well will be drained at a guinea 
a quart. Keally, if i>eople indulge in this vile and horrid taste, they will 
tempt landlords to get murders committed in their houses, for the great profit 
accruing from the morbid curiosity."* 

Observe the different use made of wit in the forego- 
ing extract, where ridicule and laughter are apphed to 
a moral purpose, viz., to the diseased appetites for hor- 
rors — not to the horrors themselves, which were never, 
in the history of literature, systematically ripped up for 
merriment, till the appearance of these Legends of san- 
guinary Broad Grins. 

The present age is sufficiently rich in its comic poets. 
They are nearly all remarkable for the gusto of their 
pleasantry, and in the singular fact that they have but 
little resemblance to each other. George Col man w^as 
an original ; Thomas Moore was an original ; the same 
may be said of Horace and James Smith ; of Theodore 
Hook ; of Hood,f and Laman Blanchard and Titmarsh ; 
of several of the wits of Blackwood, and more especially 
oi Fraser. And here, in the latter, a totally new spe- 

* " England under Seven Administrations," bv Albanv Fonblanque. 
Vol. ii. 

t It was intended to place the name of " Thomas Hood" in conjunction 
with that of "Thomas Ingoldsby" at the head of this paper ; but the idea 
was abandoned out of res):>ect to Mr. Hood, the moment the present writer 
had, for the first time, read these astounding " Legends !" 

H2 



90 TKOMAS INGOLDSBY. 

cies of comic writing should be noticed, z-iz., that of the 
classical burlesque, in wliich " Father Prout," and the 
late Dr. Maginn, have displaj^ed a mastery over the 
Greek and Latin versification that was previously un- 
known in literature, and certainly never suspected as 
possible. It was as if the dead languages were sudden- 
ly called to a state of preternatural life and activity, in 
which their old friends scarcely could believe their 
eyes, and the resuscitated Tongues themselves appear- 
ed equally astonished at their own identity. All these 
writers are in various ways full of the soul of humour, 
■wit, or merriment ; but not one of them ever dreams of 
juaking a plaything of the last struggles of humanity, 
or the " raw heads" of the charnel house. The same 
natural bounds are also equally observed by all the 
comic prose writers, numerous as they are. The " In- 
goldsby Legends" stand quite alone — and they always 
will stand quite alone, — for the "joke" will never be 
repeated. 

They are constructed upon a very curious and out- 
rageous principle. As everybody finds his self-love 
and sense of the ridiculous in a high state of enjoy- 
ment at a " damned tragedy" by reason of the incon- 
gruity of the actual emotions compared with those 
which the subject was naturally intended to convey, 
and the luckless poet had built all his hopes upon con- 
veying — the author of these Legends has hit upon a 
plan for turning this not very amiable fact to account, 
by the production of a series of self-damned tragedies. 
Or, perhaps, they may be more properly termed most 
sanguinary melo-dramas, intermixed with broad farce 
over the knife and bowl. The justly reprehensible 
novel of " Jack Sheppard" had nothing in it of this kind ; 
its brutalities were at least left to produce their natural 
revulsion ; the heroes did not gambol and slide in crim- 
son horror, and paint their felon faces with it to *' grin 
through collars." 

The prose tales of these volumes all harp, more or 
less, upon the same inhuman strings. Some of them, 
like the " Spectre of Tappington," are simply indelicate, 
but others are revolting, 'i'he death-bed (the reader is 
made fully to believe it is a death-bed) of the lady 
Rohesia, is of the latter kind. Her husband, and her 
waiting maid, though fully believing her to be just at 
the last gasp, carry on a direct amour seated on the 



THOMAS INGOLDSEY. 91 

edge of a death-bed ; and a " climax" is only prevented 
by the bursting of the dying hidy's quiusey ! The " Sin- 
gular Passage in the life of the late Henry Harris, Doc- 
tor in Divinity, as related by the Reverend Jasper In- 
goldsby, M.A., his friend and Executor" has sugges- 
tions of still worse things. Though tedious in com- 
mencing, it is a well told, exciting tale of supernatural 
events. The chief event shall be quoted. A young 
girl is betrothed to a young man, who bids her farewell 
for a time, and practices the black art upon her while 
absent, so that she is sometimes " spirited away" from 
her home into his chamber by night, there to be subject 
to all kinds of unmentionable outrages. He moreover 
has a friend to assist in his orgie ! The girl thus 
alludes to it : — 

" How shall I proceed — but no, it is impossible, — not even to \-ou, sir, can 
I — dare I — recount the proceedings of that unhallowed night of horror and 
shame. Were my life extended to a term commensurate with tliat of the 
Patriarchs of old, never could its detestable, its daniniug pollutions be ef- 
faced from my rememberance ; and oh ! above all, never could I forj.'et the 
diabolical glee which sparkled in the eyes of my fiendish tormentors, as 
they witnessed the worse than useless struggles of their miserable victim. 
Oh! why was it not permitted me to take refuge in unconsciousness — nay, 
in death itself, from the abominations of which I was compelled to be, not 
only a witness, but a partaker?" &;c. — Ingoldshij Legends, \st Series. 

The introduction of a second yoong man, by way of 
complicating this preternatural sensualism and horror, 
admits of no comment. No merriment and burlesque 
is introduced here. For once a revolting scene and its 
suggestions, are allowed to retain their true colours. 
The master-secret of a life froths up from the depths, 
and the Tale closes as such things mostly do — vvith a 
death that looks like annihilation. 

Refinement is an essential property of the Ideal, and 
whatever is touched by ideality is so far redeemed from 
earth. But where there is no touch of it, all is of the 
earth earthy. In this condition stands the Genius of 
the Ingoldsby Legends, eye-deep in its own dark slough. 
Everything falls into it which approaches, or is drawn 
near. Of all pure things. Fairy Tales are among the 
most pure and innocent; their ideality can pass safe 
and unsullied through all visible forms. But if amidst 
their revels and thin-robed dancings in the moonlight 
and over the moss, a sudden allusion be made which 
reduces them to earth — a mortal fact suddenly brought 
home, like that which says '• Look ! this is a woman ; — 
Miss Jones of the Olympic !" then does the ideal vanish 



92 THOMAS INGOLDSBY. 

away with fairy -land, add leave us with a minor theatre 
in its worst moments, and with such a tale as " Sir Ru- 
pert the Fearless," which is written upon the principle 
of one of those Olympic doggrel burlesques, the dese- 
cration of poetry in sense as in feeling. Their tenden- 
cy is to encourage the public not to believe in true 
poetry or innocence on the stage, but to be always 
ready to laugh or think ill things. 

Having previously made an allusion to the laughable 
circumstance of some Jews being burnt alive, the le- 
gend which describes it may form an appropriate con- 
clusion to this exposition. It is entitled " The Auto-da- 
Fe." This is the story. King Ferdinand had been 
married six years, and his consort not having presented 
him with " an Infant of Spain," he consults some of his 
grandees as to what he shall do for " an heir to the 
throne ?" All this part is admirably worked up. The 
grandees evade reply, and " the Most Reverend Don 
Garcilasso Quevedo," Archbishop of Tolodo, is then 
consulted, and finally proposes an Auto-da-fe, at which 
they would burn, roast, and toast some Jews. A pas- 
sage to this effect was quoted a few pages back. How 
this was at all likely to occasion her Majesty to present 
Spain with an heir, every reader, not in the secret, 
must be quite at a loss to guess. The Auto-da-fe, how- 
ever, takes place, and by way of proving that it really 
is one, and not a pantomimic burlesque, the author in- 
troduces it by a few serious remarks on the " shrieks 
of pain and wild affright," and the " soul-wrung groans 
of deep despair, and blood, and death." In the very 
next stanza, he has some fun about '' the smell of old 
clothes," and of the Jews roasting ; and in speaking of 
" the groans of the dying," he says they were " all his- 
sing, and spitting, and boiling, and frying," &c. The 
allusion also to the very delicate story of makiag 
" pretty pork," at such a moment, finishes this mono- 
maniasm of misplaced levity — " the bon7ie bouche .'" as 
he calls it, of the Auto-da-fe ! But now for the heir to 
the throne — the Infant of Spain, which all this horror 
was to influence the Queen in producing to the world! 
•Her Majesty was absent from the atrocities so merrily 
described ; she had " locked herself up" in her Oriel — 
but not alone. A male devotee was with her to assist 
in " Pater, and Ave, and Credo," the double-entendre 
character of which is made very apparent, so that her 



THOalAS INGOLDSBY. 9^ 

Majesty does, in due course, bless the nation with an 
heir to the throne. And vvlio does the astonished rea- 
der, who may not happen to be famiUar with these very 
popular Legends, suppose it was that her Majesty had 
" locked herself up with V Why the Archbishop of 
Toledo ! Yes, the most reverend Garcilasso ! — and so 
far from the slightest doubt being left on the matter, 
the author says it is not clear to him but that all Spain 
would have thought very meanly of " the pious pair" 
had It been otherwise ! The The " ^.loral" at the end, 
is as usual. In fact, rather worse. It tells you, " when 
you're in Rome, to do as Rome does !" and " in Spain 
you must do as they do" — " don't be nice !" &c., &c. 

Throughout the whole of the foregoing remarks, it 
should be observed that no animadversions have been 
made on religious grounds, nor on the score of conven- 
tional morality, nor on matters relating to social inter- 
course ; nor have any personalities escaped from the 
pen. All that has been said — and there was much to 
say — is upon the abstract grounds of Literature and 
Art; with a view to the exposition and denunciation 
of a false principle of composition, as exemplified in 
licentious works, which are unredeemed and unexten- 
uated by any one sincere passion, and are consequent- 
ly among the very worst kind of influences that could 
be exercised upon a rising generation. The present 
age is bad enough without such assistance. Wherefore 
an iron hand is now laid upon the shoulder of Thomas 
Ingoldsby, and a voice murmurs in his ear, " Brother ! — 
no more of this !" 



WALTER SAVAGE LANDOR. 

" Thy worth and skill exempts thee from the throng." — Milton. 

Let his page 
Which charms the chosen Spirits of the Age, 
Fold itself up for a serener clime 
Of years to cosne, and find its recompense 
In that just exi>ectation."— Shelley. 

Walter Landor, when a Rugby boy, was famous, 
among other feats of strength and skill, for the wonder- 
ful precision with which he used a cast net ; and he 
was not often disposed to ask permission of the owners 
of those ponds or streams that suited his morning's fan- 
cy. One day a farmer suddenly came down upon him ; 
and ordered him to desist, and give up his net. Where- 
upon Landor instantly cast his net over the farmer's 
head; caught him; entangled him; overthrew him; 
and when he was exhausted, addressed the enraged and 
discomfited face beneath the meshes, till the farmer 
promised to behave discreetly. The pride that resent- 
ed a show of intimidation, the prudence that instantly 
foresaw the only means of superseding punishment, and 
the promptitude of will and action, are sufficiently con- 
spicuous. The wilful energy and self-dependent force 
of character displayed by Walter Landor as a boy, and 
accompanied by physical power and activity, all of 
which were continued through manhood, and probably 
have been so, to a great extent, even up to the present 
time, have exerted an influence upon his genius of a 
very peculiar kind ; — a genius healthy, but the health- 
fulness not always well applied — resolute, inahon-like 
sense, but not intellectually concentrated and continu- 
ous ; and seeming to be capable of mastering all thing.s 
except its own wilful impulses. 

Mr. Landor is a man of genius and learning, who 
stands in a position unlike that of any other eminent 
individual of his time. He has received no apparent 
influence from any one of his contemporaries ; nor have 
they or the public received any apparent influence from 
liim. The absence of any fixed and definite influence 



WALTER SAVAGE LANDOR. 95 

Upon the public is actually as it seems ; but that he has- 
exercised a considerable influence upon the minds of 
many of his contemporaries is inevitable, because so 
fine a spirit could never have passed through any com- 
petent medium without communicating its electric for- 
ces, although from the fineness of its elements, the ef- 
fect, like the cause, has been of too subtle a nature to 
leave a tangible or visible impress. 

To all these causes combined is attributable the sin- 
gular fact, that although Walter Savage Landor has 
been before the public as an author during the last fifty 
years, his genius seldom denied, but long since general- 
ly recognized, and his present position admissibly in 
that of the highest rank of authors — and no man higher 
— there has never been any philosophical and critical 
estimate of his powers. Admired he has often been 
abundantly, but the admiration has only been supported 
by " extract," or by an offhand opinion. The present 
paper does not pretend to supply this great deficiency 
in our literature ; it will attempt to do no more than 
"open up" the discussion. 

Walter Landor, when at Rugby school, was a leader 
in all things, yet who did not associate with his school- 
fellows — the infallible sign of a strong and original 
character and course through life. He was conspicuous 
there for his resistance to every species of tyranny, 
either of the masters and their rules, or the boys and 
their system of making fags, which things he resolutely 
opposed " against all odds :" and he was, at the same 
time, considered arrogant and overbearing in his own 
conduct. He was almost equally famous for riding out 
of bounds, boxing, leaping, net-casting, stone-throwing, 
and for making Greek and Latin verses. Many of these 
verses were repeated at Rugby forty years after he had 
left the school. The " master," however, studiously 
slighted him so long, that when at last the token was 
given of approbation of certain Latin verses, the indig- 
nant young classic being obliged to copy them out 
fairly in the " play-book," added a few more, commenc- 
ing with, — 

" HaEC sunt malorum pessima carminum 
Q.uot Landor unquam scripsit; at accipe 
CiiiEB Tarquini set vas cloacam, 
Unde tuura, dea flava noraen," &c. 

From Rugby to Trinity College, Oxford, was the 
next remove of Walter Landor. He was " rusticated" 



96 WALTER SAVAGE LANDOR. 

for firing off a gun in the quadrangle ; but as he never 
intended to take a degree, he did not return. He left 
Oxford — let all the juvenile critics who have taken up 
facile pens of judgment about Mr. Landor during the 
last ten years, tremble as they read, and "doubt their 
own abilities" — in the summer of 1793, when he put 
forth a small volume of poems. They were published 
by Cadell, and it will not be thought very surprising 
that the first poems of a young man, at that time quite 
unknown to the world, should in the lapse of fifty years 
have become out of print. His next performances may, 
with sufficient trouble, be obtained. They are the 
poems of " Gebir," " Chrysaor," the " Phocaeans," &c., 
and the very high encomiums passed upon " Gebir" by 
Southey, with whom Landor was not acquainted till 
some twelve years afterwards, were accounted as suf- 
ficient fame by their author. Southey's eulogy of the 
poem appeared in the Critical Review, to the great 
anger of Gifford, whose translation of " .luvenal" was 
by no means so much praised in the same number. 
One of the most strikingly characteristic facts in con- 
nection with Mr. Lander is, that while he has declared 
his own doubts as to whether Nature intended him for 
a poet, " because he could never please himself by any- 
thing he ever did of that kind," it must be perfectly 
evident to everybody who knows his writings, that he 
never took the least pains to please the public. The 
consequences were almost inevitable. 

After leaving Trinity, Mr. Landor passed some 
months in London, learning Italian, and avoiding all 
society; he then retired to Swansea, where he wrote 
" Gebir" — lived in comparative solitude — made love 
— and was happy. 

The " attitude" in which the critical literati of the 
time received the poem of " Gebir," was very much 
the same as though such a work had never been pub- 
lished. A well-written critique, however, did appear 
as one exception, in a northern provincial paper, in 
which Mr. Landor was compared, in certain respects, 
■with Goethe ; another we have also seen, which was 
full of grandly eloquent and just expressions of appre- 
ciation — printed, we believe, in Aberdeen, within two 
years since, and signed G. G. ; — but the earliest was 
written by Southey, as previously stated. No doubt 
Mr. Lander has read the latter, but it is his habit (and 



WALTER SAVAGE LANDOR. 97 

one more common among authors of original genius 
than is at all suspected) never to read critiques upon 
himself. His feeling towards this department of litera-^ 
ture may be estimated by his offer of a hot penny roll 
and a pint of stout, for breakfast (!) to any critic who 
could write one of his Imaginary Conversations — an 
indigestible pleasantry which horribly enraged more 
than one critic of the time. Of " Gebir," however, 
Coleridge was accustomed to speak in terms of great 
praise ; till one day he heard Southey speak of it with 
equal admiration, after which ColeriJge altered his 
mind — 'he did wo^ admire it — he must have been mis- 
taken.' 

A few biographical memoranda of Mr. Landor will be 
found interesting, previous to offering some remarks 
on his genius and works. During the time he was 
studying Italian in London, after leaving Trinity, his 
godfather, General Powell, was anxious that he should 
enter the army, for which he seemed peculiarly adapt- 
ed, excepting that he entertiiined republican principles 
which " would not do there." This proposal being 
negatived, his father offered to allow him 400/. per 
annum, if he would adopt the law and reside in the 
Temple ; but he declared that he would allow him but 
little more than one-third of that sum, if he refused. Of 
course Walter Landor well knew that he might have 
enjoyed a gay London life with 400/. per annum, in the 
Temple, and neglected the law, as, here and there, a 
young gentleman of the Temple is apt to do ; he, how- 
ever, preferred to avoid false pretences, accepted the 
smaller income, and studied Italian. 

Mr. Landor wrote verses in Italian at this period, 
which were not very good, yet not perhaps worse than 
Milton's. The poetry of Italy did not captivate his more 
severely classical taste at tirst ; he says it seemed to 
liim "like the juice of grapes and melons left on yester- 
day's plate." He had just been reading ^Eschylus, So- 
phocles, and Pindar. But his opinion was altered di- 
rectly he read Dante, which he did not do till some 
years afterwards. 

That his uncle was not so far wrong in thinking 
Landor well suited to a military life, the following an- 
ecdote will serve to attest. — At the breaking out of the 
Spanish war against the French, he was the first Eng- 
lishman who landed in Spain. He raised a few troops 
I 



98 WALTER SAVAGE LANDGR. 

at his own expense and conducted them from Corimna 
to Aguilar, the head-quarters of Gen. Blake, Viceroy of 
Gallicia. For this he received the thanks of the Su- 
preme Jmita in the Madrid Gazette, together with an 
acknowledgment of the donation of 20,000 reals from 
Mr. Landor. He returned the letters and documents, 
with his commission, to Don Pedro Cevallos, on the 
subversion of the Constitution by Ferdinand, — telling 
Don Pedro that he was willing to aid a people in the 
assertion of its liberties against the antagonist of Eu- 
rope, but that he could have nothing to do with a per- 
jurer and traitor. 

Mr. Landor went to Paris in the beginning of the 
century, where he witnessed the ceremony of Napo- 
leon being made Consul for life, amidst the acclama- 
tions of multitudes. He subsequently saw the de- 
throned and deserted Emperor pass through Tours on 
his way to embark, as he intended, for America. Na- 
poleon was attended only by a single servant, and de- 
scended at the Prefecture unrecognized by any-body 
excepting Landor. The people of Tours were most 
hostile to Napoleon ; Landor had always felt a hatred 
towards him, and now he had but to point one finger 
at him, and it would have done what all the artillery of 
twenty years of war had failed to do. The people 
would have torn him to pieces. Need it be said Landor 
was too "good a hater," and too noble a man, to avail 
himself of such an opportunity. He held his breath, 
and let the hero pass. Perhaps, after all, there was no 
need of any of this hatred on the part of Mr. Landor, 
■who, in common with many other excessively wilful 
men, were probably as much exasperated at Napole- 
on's commanding successes, as at his falling off from 
pure republican principles. Howbeit, Landor's great 
hatred, and yet " greater" forbearance are hereby chron- 
icled. 

In 1806, Mr. Landor sold several estates in Warwick- 
shire which had been in his family nearly seven hun- 
dred years, and purchased Lantony and Comjoy in 
Monmouthshire, where he laid out nearly JC70,000. 
Here he made extensive improvements, giving employ- 
ment daily, for many years, to between twenty and 
thirty labourers in building and planting. He made a 
road, at his own expense, of eight miles long, and 
planted and fenced half a million of trees. The infa- 



WALTER SAVAGE LANDOR. 99 

mous behaviour of some tenants caused him to leave 
the country. At this time he had a milUon more trees 
all ready to plant, which, as he observed, '' were lost to 
the country by driving me from it. I may speak of 
their utihty, if I must not of my own." The two chief 
offenders were brothers who rented farms of Mr. Lan- 
: dor to the amount of jC1500 per annum, and were to 
. introduce an improved system of vSuffolk husbandry. 
Mr. Landor got no rent from them, but all manner of 
atrocious annoyances. They even rooted up his trees 
and destroyed whole plantations. They paid nobody. » 
When neighbours and workpeople applied for money, 
Mr. Landor says, " they were referred to the Devil, 
with their wives and families, wliile these brothers had 
their two bottles of wine upon the table. As for the 
Suffolk system of agriculture, wheat was sown upon 
the last of May, and cabbages for winter food were 
planted in August or September." Mr. Landor eventu- 
ally remained master of the field, and drove his tor- 
mentors across the seas; but so great was his disgust 
at these circumstances that he resolved to leave Eng- 
land. Before liis departure he caused his house, which 
had cost him some 8000Z to be taken down, that his 
son might never have the chance of similar vexations 
in that place. 

In 1811, Mr. Landor married Julia, the daughter of J. 
Thuillier de Malaperte, descendant and representative 
of the Baron de Neuve-ville, first gentleman of the bed- 
chamber to Charles the Eighth. He went to reside m 
Italy in 1815, and during several years occupied the 
Palazzo Medici, in Florence. Subsequently he pur- 
chased the beautiful and romantic villa of Count Ghe- 
rardesca at Fiesole, with its gardens and farms, scarce- 
ly a quarter of an hour's walk from the ancient villa of 
Lorenzo de' Medici, and resided there ma.ny years in 
comparative solitude. 

Of the difference between the partialities of the pub-^ 
iic, and the eventual judgments of the people ; betweeiil 
a deeply-founded fame and an ephemeral interest, fewi 
more striking examples will perhaps be discovered ini 
future years than in the solitary course of Walter Sav-I 
age Landor amidst the various " hghts of his day." He 
has incontestibly displayed original genius as a writer ; 
the highest critical faculty — that sympathy with genius 
and knowledge which can only result from imaginatioa 



100 WALTER SAVAGE LANDOR. 

and generous love of truth — and also a fine scholarship 
in the spirit as well as the letter of classical attain- 
ments. But the public, tacitly, has denied his claims, 
or worse — admitted them with total indifference, — let- 
ling fall from its benumbed fingers, work after work, 
not because any one ventured to say, or perhaps even 
to think, the books were unworthy, but because the 
hands were cold. A writer of original genius may be 
popular in his lifetime, as sometimes, occurs, by means 
of certain talents and tacts comprehended in his ge- 
nius ; by the aid of startling novelties, or by broad and 
general effects ; and by the excitement of adventitious 
circumstances ; — on which ground is to be worked the 
problem of Lord Byron's extensive popularity with the 
very same daily and yearly reading public that made 
mocks and mowes at Coleridge, and Wordsworth, and 
Shelley, and Keats. But as a general rule, the origi- 
nality of a man, say and do what he may, is necessari- 
ly in itself an argument against his rapid popularity. 
In the case of Mr. Landor, however, other causes than 
the originality of his faculty have opposed his favour 
with the public. He has the most select audience per- 
haps, — the fittest, fewest, — of any distinguished author 
of the day ; and this of his choice. " Give me," he 
said in one of his prefaces, " ten accomplished men for 
readers, and 1 am content ;" — and the event does not 
by any means so far as we could desire, outstrip the 
modesty, or despair, or disdain, of this aspiration. He 
writes criticism for critics, and poetry for poets : his 
drama, when he is dramatic, will suppose neither pit 
nor gallery, nor critics, nor dramatic laws. He is not 
a publican among poets— he does not sell his Amreeta 
cups upon the highway. He delivers them rather with 
the dignity of a giver, to ticketted persons ; analyzing 
their flavour and fragrance with a learned delicacy, and 
an appeal to the esoteric. His very spelling of English 
is uncommon and theoretic. He has a vein of humour 
which by its own nature is peculiarly subtle and eva- 
sive ; he therefore refines upon it, by his art, in order 
to prevent anybody discovering it without a grave, so- 
licitous, and courtly approach, which is unspeakably 
ridiculous to all the parties concerned, and w^hich na 
doubt the author secretly enjovs. And as if poetry 
were not, ia English, a sufficiently unpopular dead lan- 
guage, he has had recourse to writing poetry in Latin; 



WALTER SAVAGE LANDOR. 101 

with dissertations on the Latin tongue, to fence it out 
doubly from the populace. " Odi profanum vulgus, et 
■arceo.'''' 

Whether Mr. Landor writes Latin or English poetry 
or prose, he does it all with a certain artistic composure, 
as if he knew what he was doing, and respected the 
cunning of his right hand. At times he displays an 
equal respect for its wilfulness. In poetry, his " Gebir," 
the " Phocaeans" and some other performances take a 
high classic rank. He can put out extraordinary pow- 
er both in description and situation; but the vitality, 
comprehended in the power, does not overflow along 
the inferior portions of the work, so as to sustain them 
to the level of the reader's continued attention. The 
poet rather builds up to his own elevations than carries 
them out and on ; and the reader passes from admira- 
tion to admiration, by separate states or shocks and not 
by a continuity of interest through the intervals of emo- 
tion. Thus it happens that his best dramatic works, — 
those, the impression of which on the mind is most 
definite and excellent, — are fragmentary ; and that his 
complete dramas are not often read through twice, even 
by readers who applaud them, but for the sake of a par- 
ticular act or scene. 

A remark should be made on Mr. Landors blank 
verse, in which the poems just named, and several 
others, are written. It is the very best of the regular- 
syllable class, the versification of " numbers," as they 
have been characteristically called by the schools. His 
blank verse is not only the most regular that ever was 
written, but it is the most sweet, and far less monoton- 
ous than we should expect of a musical system which 
excluded accasional discords. It has all the effect of 
the most melodious rhyming heroic verse ; indeed, it 
often gives the impression of elegiac verses in rhyme. 
; As blank verse it is a very bad model. There is more 
freedom in his dramatic verse, and always the purest 
style. 

His dramatic works (except the compact little scenes 
entitled " Pentalogia," which are admirable,) are writ- 
ten upon an essentially undramatic principle ; or, more 
probably, on no principle at all. Mr. Landor well 
knows " all the laws," and they seem to provoke his 
will to be lawless. In this species of drama-looking 
composition he displays at times the finest passion, the 
12 



102 ^VA^TER savage landor. 

most pure and perfect style of dramatic dialogue, and 
an intensity of mental movements, with their invisible, 
undeclared, }- et necessaril}'' tragic results ; all of Avhich 
proves him to possess the most wonderful three-fourths 
of a great dramatic genius which ever appeared in the 
world. But the fourth part is certainly wanting by way 
of making good his ground to the eyes, and ears, and 
understanding of the masses. In his " Andrea of Hun- 
gary," the action does not commence till the last scene , 
of the third act ; and is not continued in the first scene 
of the fourth! Instead of the expected continuation, after 
all this patience, the confounded reader has his breath 
taken away by the sauntering entrance of Boccacio — 
the novelist — accompanied by Fiammetta, who having 
nothing whatever to do with the drama, the former 
sings her little song ! This extremely free-and-easy- 
style of treading the boards is so verynew^ and delight- 
ful that it excites the idea of continuing the scene by 
the introduction of the Genius of the Drama, with a 
paper speech coming out of his mouth, on which is in- 
scribed the Laws of Concentration and Continuity, the 
Laws of Progressive action, and the Art of Construc- 
tion. To whom, Enter the Author, iDith a cast-net. He 
makes his cast to admiration ; trips up the heels of the 
Genius of the Drama, and leaves it sprawling. It is 
his own doing. 

In whatever Mr. Landor writes, his power, when he 
puts it forth, is of the first order. He is classical in 
the highest sense. His conceptions stand out, clearly 
cut and fine, in a magnitude and nobility as far as pos- 
sible removed from the small and sickly vagueness 
common to this century of letters. If he seems ob- 
scure at times, it is from no infirmity or inadequacy of 
thought or word, but from extreme concentration, and 
involution in brevity — for a short string can be tied in a - 
knot, as well as a long one. He can be tender, as the j 
strong can best be ; and his pathos, when it comes, is ; 
profound. His descriptions are full and startling ; his 
thoughts, self-produced and bold; and he has the art/ 
of taking a common-place under a new aspect, and of 
leaving the Roman brick, marble. Iii marble indeed, 
he seems to work; for there is an angularity in the 
workmanship, whether of prose or verse, which the 
very exquisiteness of the polish renders more con- 
spicuous. You m.ay complain too of hearing the chiseV 



WALTER SAVAGE LANDOR. 103 

but after all, you applaud the work — it is a v/ork M^ell 
done. The elaboration produces no sense of heavi- 
ness, — the severity of the outline does not militate 
against beauty; — if it is cold, it is also noble — if not 
impulsive, it is suggestive. As a witer of Latin poems, 
he ranks with our most successful scholars and poets ; 
, having less harmony and majesty than Milton had, — 
when he aspired to that species of " Life in Death," — 
but more variety and freedom of utterance. Mr, Lan- 
dor's English prose writings possess most of the char- 
acteristics of his poetry ; only they are more perfect in^ 
their class. His " Pericles and Aspasia," and '' Penta- 
raeron," are books for the world and for all time, 
whenever the world and time shall come to their senses 
about them ; complete in beauty of sentiment and sub- 
tlety of criticism. His general style is highly scholas- 
tic and elegant, — his sentences have articulations, if 
such an expression may be permitted, of very excellent 
proportions. And, abounding in striking images and 
thoughts, he is remarkable for making clear the ground 
around them, and for lifting them, like statues to pedes- 
tals, where they may be seen most distinctly, and strike 
with the most enduring though often the most gradual 
impression. This is the case both in his prose works 
and his poetry. It is more conspicuously true of some 
of his smaller poems, which for quiet classic grace and 
tenderness, and exquisite care in their polish, may best 
be compared with beautiful cameos and vases of the 
antique. 

Two works should be mentioned — one of which is 
only known to a few among his admirers, and the other 
not at all. Neither of them were published, and though 
printed they were very little circulated. The first is 
entitled, "Poems from the Arabic and Persian." They 
pretended to be translations, but were written by Lan- 
der for the pleasure of misleading certain orientalists, 
and other learned men. In this he succeeded, and for 
the first time in the known history of such hoaxes, not 
to the discredit of the credulous, for the poems are ex- 
tremely beautiful, and breathe the true oriental spirit 
throughout. They are ornate in fancy, — graceful, and 
full of unaffected tenderness. They were printed in 
1800, with many extremely enidite notes ; in writing 
which, the author, no doubt, laughed ver}- much to 
himself at the critical labour and searching they would- 



104 WALTER SAVAGE LANDOR. 

excite. The other production is called " A Satire upon 
Satirists, and Admonition to Detractors," printed in 
1836. It contains many just indignations, terrible de- 
nunciations, and cleaving blows against those who used 
not many years since to make a rabid crusade upon all 
genius; but the satire occasionally makes attacks upon 
some who do not deserve to be so harshly treated by a 
brother author; and we cannot but rejoice that this 
satire (in its present state) has not been pubhshed. 

Mr. Landor's wit and humour are of a very original 
kind, as previously remarked. Perhaps in none of his 
writings does their peculiarity occur so continuously 
as in a series of Letters, entitled " High and Low Life 
in Italy." Every sarcasm, irony, jest, or touch of hu- 
mour, is secreted beneath the skin of each tingling 
member of his sentences. His w^it and his humour are 
alike covered up amidst various things, apparently in- 
tended to lead the reader astray, as certain birds are 
wont to do when you approach the nests that contain 
their broods. Or, the main jests and knotty points of 
a paragraph are planed down to the smooth level of the 
rest of the sentences, so that the reader may walk over 
them without knowing anything of the matter. All 
this may be natural to his genius ; it may also result 
from pride, or perversity. So far from seeking the 
public, his genius has displayed a sort of apathy, if not 
antipathy, to popularity ; therefore, the public must court 
it, if they would enjoy it ; to ppssess yourself of his 
wit you must scrutinize ; to be let into the secret of 
his humour you must advance '* pointing the toe." 
Such are the impressions derivable from Mr. Landor's 
writings. In private social intercourse nothing of the 
kind is apparent, and there are few men whose con- 
versation is more unaflected, manly, pleasing, and in- 
structive. 

The imagination of Mr. Landor is richly graphic, 
classic, and subtly refined. In portraying a character, 
his imagination identifies itself with the mentality and 
the emotions of its inner being, and all those idiosyn- 
cracies which may be said to exist between a man and 
himself, but with which few, if anybody else, have any 
business. In other respects, most of his characters — 
especially those of his own invention — might live, think, 
move, and have their being in space, so little does their 
author trouble himself with their corporeal conditions. 



WALTER SAVAGE LAN DOR. 105 

Whether it be that their author feels his own physique 
so strongly that it does not occur to him that any one 
else can need such a thing — he will find all that for 
them — or that it is the habit of his genius to abstract 
itself from corporeal realities, (partly from the perverse 
love a man continually has of being his own " opposite,") 
and ascend into a more subtle element of existence, — 
certain it is that many of his characters are totally 
without material or definite /orw? ,• appear to live no 
where, and upon nothing, and to be very independent 
agents, to v/hom practical action seldom or never oc- 
curs. " They think, therefore they are." They feel, 
and know (they are apt too often to know as much as 
their author) therefore they are characters. But they 
are usually without bodily substance : and such form 
as they seem to have, is an abstraction which plays 
round them, but might go off in air at any time, and the 
loss be scarcely apparent. The designs of his larger 
works, as wholes, are also deficient in compactness of 
form, precision of outline, and condensation. They 
often seem wild, not at all intellectually, but from un- 
governed will. It is difficult not to arrive at conclu- 
sions of this kind — though different minds will, of 
course, see differently — after a careful study of the 
dramas of " Andrea of Hungary," " Giovanna of Na- 
ples," and " Fra Rupert ;" the "Pericles and Aspasia," 
the "Pentameron and Pentalogia," &c. The very title 
of the " Imaginary Conversations" gives a strong fore- 
taste of Mr. Landor's predominati^ ideality, and dis- 
missal of mortal bonds and conditions. The extraor- 
dinary productions last named are as though their 
author had been rarified while listening to the conver- 
sation, or the double soliloquies, of august Shades ; all 
of which he had carefully written down on resuming 
his corporeality, and where his memory failed him he 
had supplied the deficiency with some sterling stuff of 
his own. The Landorean "peeps" seen through these 
etherial dialogues and soliloquies of the mighty dead, 
are seldom to be mistaken ; and though hardly at times 
in accordance with their company, are seldom un- 
worthy of the highest. 

As a partial exception to some of the foregoing re- 
marks, should be mentioned the " Examination of Wil- 
liam Shakspeare before Sir Thomas Lucy, Knt., touch- 
ing Deer-stealing." Of all the thousands of books that 



106 WALTER SAVAGE LANDOR. 

have issued from the press about Shakspeare, this one 
of Mr. Landor's is by far the most admirable. It is 
worth them all. There is the high-water mark of 
genius upon every page, lit by as true a sun as ever the 
ocean mirrored. Perfect and inimitable from beginning- 
to end, that it has not become the most popular of all 
the books relating to Shakspeare, is only to be account- 
ed for by some perversity or dulness of the public. The 
book is, certainly, not read. There is great love and 
reading bestowed upon every cant about Shakspeare, 
and much interest has been shown in all the hoaxes. 
Perhaps the public thought this book was authentic. 

In an age of criticism like this, when to " take" a po- 
sition over a man and his work, is supposed to include 
proportionally superior powers of judgment, though not 
one discovery, argument, or searching remark, be ad- 
duced in proof; when analysis is publicly understood 
to mean everything that can be done for the attainment 
of a correct estimate, and the very term, alone, of 
synthesis looks pedantic and outre ; and when any 
anonymous young man may gravely seat himself, in 
the fancy of his unknowing readers, far above an 
author who may have pubhshed works — of genius, 
learning, or knowledge and experience, at the very pe- 
riod that his We Judge was perhaps learning to write 
at school, — it is only becoming in an attempt like that 
of the present paper, to disclaim all assumption of final- 
ity of judgment upon a noble veteran of established 
genius, concerningAvhom there has never yet been one 
philosophically elaborated criticism. To be the first to 
*' break ground" upon the broad lands of the authors of 
characters and scenes from real life, is often rather a 
perilous undertaking for any known critic who values 
his reputation ; but to unlock the secret chambers of 
an etherial inventiveness, and pronounce at once upon 
its contents, would only manifest the most short-sight- 
ed presumption. Simply to have unlocked such cham- 
bers for the entrance of others, were task enough for 
one contemporary. 

Any' sincere and mature opinions of the master of an 
art are always valuable, and not the less so when com- 
inenting upon established reputations, or those about 
which a contest still exists. We may thus be shaken 
in our faith, or confirmed in it. Mr. Landor's mode of 
expressing his opinion often amounts to appealing to 



WALTER SAVAGE LANDOR 107 

an inner sense for a corroboration of the truth. He 
says, in a letter to a friend, " I found the ' Faery Queen' 
the most dehghtful book in the world to fall asleep 
upon by the sea-side. Geoffrey Chaucer always kept 
me wide awake, and beat at a distance all other English 
poets but Shakspeare and Milton. In many places 
Keats approaches him." After remarking on the faults 
and occasional affectations discoverable in two or three 
of the earliest poems of that true and beautiful genius, 
Mr. Landor adds that he considers " no poet (always 
excepting Shakspeare) displays so many happy expres- 
sions, or so vivid a fancy as Keats. A few hours in the 
Paecile with the Tragedians would have made him all 
he wanted — majestically sedate. I wonder if an}^ re- 
morse has overtaken his murderers. 

Mr. Landor is not at all the product of the present 
age ; he scarcely belongs to it ; he has no direct influ- 
ence upon it : but he has been an influence to some of 
its best teachers, and to some of the most refined illus- 
trators of its vigorous spirit. For the rest — for the 
duty, the taste, or the favor of posterity — when a suc- 
cession of publics shall have slowly accumulated a re- 
siduum of " golden opinions" in the shape of pure ad- 
miring verdicts of competent minds, then only, if ever, 
will he attain his just estimation in the not altogether 
impartial roll of Fame. If ever 1 — the wT)rds fell from 
the pen — and the manly voice of him to whom they 
were apphed, seems to call from his own clear altitude, 
" Let the words remain." For in the temple of pos- 
terity there have hitherto always "appeared some im- 
mortalities which had better have burned out, while 
some great works, or names, or both, have been suffer- 
ed to drift away into oblivion. That such is likely to be 
the fate of the writings of Walter Savage Landor, no- 
body can for a moment believe ; but were it so des- 
tined, and he could foresee the result, one can imagine 
his taking a secret pleasure in this resolution of his 
works into their primitive elements. 



WILLIAM AND MARY HOWITT. 

" While the still n)orn went out with sandals grey, 
He tcmclied the tender stops of various quills. 
With enger thought, vvaiTjling his Doric lay : 
And now the sun had stretched out all the hills, 
And now was dropt into the western bay ; 
At last he rose, and twitched his mantle blue : 
To-morrow to fresh woods, and pastures new."— Lycidas. 

" And all was conscience and tender heart. 

******* 

And so discreet and fair of eloquence, 
So benigne and so digne of reverence. 
And coulde so the people's heart embrace, 
That each her loveth that looketh on her face. 

******* 

Published was the bounty of her name. 

And eke beside in many a region : 

If one saith well, another saith the same. 

******* 

There n' as discord, rancour, or heaviness, 
In all the land, that she ne could appease. 
And wisely bring tliem all in heartes ease." — Chaucer. 

The numerous literary labours of William and Maiy 
Hovvitt, are so inextricably and so interestingly mixed up 
with their biographies, that they can only be appropriate- 
ly treated under one head. 

WiUiam Howitt is a native of Derbyshire, where his 
family have been considerable landed proprietors for 
many generations. In the reign of Elizabeth a Thomas 
Howitt, Esq., married a INIiss Middleton, and on the di- 
vision of the estate, of which she was co-heiress, the 
manors of Wansley and Eastwood fell to the lot of Mrs. 
Howitt, who came to reside with her husband at Wan- 
sley Hall in Nottinghamshire. 

The Howitts — according to a memoir of their early 
days, now out of print, and of which we shall avail our- 
selves, as far as it goes, having ascertained its authen- 
ticity — the Howitts appear to have been of the old school 
of country squires, who led a jolly, careless life — hunt- 
ing, shooting, feasting, and leaving their estate to take 
care of itself as it might, and which, of course, fell into 
a steady consumption. The broad lands of Wansley 
and Eastwood slipped away piece-meal ; Wansley Hall 
and its surrounding demesne followed ; the rectory of 



WILLIAM AND MARY HUWITT. 109 

Eastwood, wliich had been a comfortable berth for a 
younger son, was the last portion of Miss Middleton's 
dowry, which lingered in the family, and that was even- 
tually sold to the Plu litre family, in which it yet re- 
mains. The rectors of Eastwood appear, from family 
documents, to have very faithfully foUowed out such an 
education as they may be supposed to have received 
from their parents. They were more devoted to the 
field than the pulpit ; and the exploits of the last rector 
of the name of Howitt and old Squire RoUeston, of 
Watnall, are not yet forgotten. 

The demesne of one heiress being dissipated, there 
was not wanting another with which to repair the w-aste 
with her gold. The great-grandfather of our author 
married the daughter and sole heiress of a gentleman 
of Nottinghamshire, with whom he received a large sum 
in money. This was soon spent, and so much was the 
lady's father exasperated at the hopeless waste of his 
son-in-law, that he cut off his own daughter with a shil- 
ling, and left the estate to an adopted son. The disin- 
herited man did not, however, learn wisdom from this 
lesson, unless he considered it wisdom " to daff the 
world aside and let it pass ; he adhered stoutly to the 
hereditary habits and maxims of his ancestors; and a 
wealthy old aunt of his, residing at Derby, getting a 
suspicion that he only waited her death to squander her 
hoard too, adopted the stratagem of sending a messen- 
ger to Heanor to announce to him the melancholy in- 
telligence of her decease. The result justified her fears. 
The jolly squire liberally rewarded the messenger, and 
setting the village bells a- ringing, began his journey to- 
wards Derby to take possession. To his great conster- 
nation and chagrin, however, instead of finding the la- 
dy dead, he found her very much alive indeed, and rea- 
dy to receive him with a most emphatic announcement, 
that she had followed the example of his father-in-law, 
and had struck him out of her will altogether. She 
faithfully kept her word. The only legacy which she 
left to this jovial spendthrift was his great two-handled 
breakfast pot, out of which he consumed every morning 
as much toast and ale as would have " filled" a baron 
X)f the fourteenth century. 

This old gentleman seems to have been not only of 

a most reckless, but also of an unresentful disposition. 

He appears to have continued a familiar intercourse 

with the gentleman who superseded him in the estate, 

K 



110 WILLIAM AND MARY HOWITT 

who likewise maintained towards him a conduct that 
was very honourable. The disinherited squire was one 
of the true Squire Western-school, and spent the re- 
mainder of his hfe in a manner particularly character- 
istic of the times. He and another dilapidated old gen- 
tleman of the name of Johnson, used to proceed from 
house to house amongst their friends, till probably they 
had scarcely a home of their own, carousing and drink- 
ing "jolly good ale and old.*^ They sojourned a long 
time at one of these places, regularly going out with the 
greyhounds in the morning, or if it were summer, a-fish- 
ing, and carousing in the evenings, till one day the but- 
ler gave them a hint, by announcing that " the barrel was 
out." On this they proceeded to Lord Middleton's, at 
Wollerton, and after a similar career and a similar ca- 
rousing, to the house of a gentleman in Lincolnshire. 
The building of Wollerton Hall, it is said, had conside- 
rably impoverished the Middleton family; but Lord 
Middleton was unmarried ; and as the Lincolnshire gen- 
tleman had an only daughter and a splendid fortune, 
family tradition says, that by extolling the parties to 
each other a match was brought about by these old 
gentlemen, much to the satisfaction of both sides ; and 
they were made free of the cellar and the greyhounds 
for the remainder of their lives. 

The son of this spendthrift, instead of being posses- 
sor of an estate, became a manager of a part of it for 
the fortunate proprietor. There was, however, a friend- 
ly feehng always kept up between the new proprietors 
and the Howitts, and by this means the father of our 
author — who was a man of a different stamp from his 
progenitors — was enabled, in some degree, to restore 
the fortunes of the family, and to establish a handsome 
property. Miss Tantum, whom he married, was a 
member of the Society of Friends, as her ancestors 
had been from the commencement of the Society ; and 
Mr. Thomas Howitt, previous to his marriage, as was 
required by the rules of the Friends, entered the Soci- 
ety, and has always continued in it. 

William Howitt, the subject of the present biograph- 
ical sketch, is one of six brothers. He was educated 
at different schools of the Friends ; but, as we have fre- 
quently heard him declare, was much more indebted to 
a steady practice of self-instruction than to any school 
or teacher whatever. He early showed a predilection 



WILLIAM AND MARY HOWITT. Ill 

for poetry, and in a periodical of that day, called " Lit- 
erary Recreations," a copy of some verses " On 
Spring" may be found, stated to be by " William How- 
itt, a boy 13 years of age." During the time that he 
was not at school, he was accustomed, with his eldest 
brother, to stroll all over the country, shooting, cours- 
ing, and fishing, with an indefatigable zeal which would 
have delighted any of the Nimrods from whom he was 
descended. As a boy he had been an eager birds'-nester, 
and these after pursuits, together with a strong poeti- 
cal temperament, and a keen perception of the beauties 
of nature, made him familiar with all the haunts, reces- 
ses, productions, and creatures of the country. In this 
manner the greatest portion of his early life was spent. 
After he arrived at manhood, however, those country 
pleasures were blended with an active study of Chem- 
istry, Botany, Natural and Moral Philosophy, and of 
the works of the best writers of Italy, France, and his 
own country. He also turned the attention of his 
youngest brother, now Dr. Howitt, to the study of 
British Botany, aud the Doctor has since prosecuted it 
with more constancy and success than himself. Gen- 
eral literature, and poetry, soon drew his attention more 
forcibly, and his marriage, in his twenty eighth year, 
no doubt naturally contributed to strengthen this ten- 
dency. The lady of his choice was Miss Mary Botham, 
of Uttoxeter, in Staffordshire, also a member of the 
Society of Friends, and now familiar to the public as 
the delightful authoress, Mary Howitt. 

Mary Howitt is, by her mother's side, directly de- 
scended from Mr. William W^ood, the Irish patentee, 
about whose halfpence, minted under a contract from 
the Government of George II., Dean Swift raised such 
a disturbance with his " Drapier's Letters," successful- 
ly preventing the issue of the coinage, and saddling Mr. 
Wood with a loss of jC60,000, Sir Robert Walpoie, the 
minister, resisting all recompense for his loss, although 
Sir Isaac Newton, who was appointed to assay the 
coinage, pronounced it better than the contract required, 
and Mr. Wood, of course, justly entitled to remunera- 
tion.* His son, Mr. Charles Wood, the grandfather of 
Mrs. Howitt, and who became assay-master in Jamai- 
ca, was the first who introduced platinum into Europe. 

* See Ruding's " Annals of Coinage." 



112 WILLIAM AND MARY HOWITT. 

Mr. Howitt on his marriage went to reside in Staf- 
fordshire, and continued there about a year. Mrs. 
Howitt and himself being of the most congenial taste 
and disposition, determined to publish jointly a vohmie 
of poetry. This appeared under the title of " The For- 
est Minstrel," in 1823. It was highly applauded by the 
press, and is sufficiently characteristic of both its wri- 
ters — the irresistible tendency of one to describe natu- 
ral scenery, and the legendary propensities of the other. 

Soon after their marringe they undertook a walk into 
Scotland, having long admired warmly the ballad poetry 
and traditions of that country'. In this rumble, after 
landing at Dumbarton, they went on over mountain and 
moorland wherever they proposed to go, for one thous- 
and miles, walking more than five hundred of it, Mrs. 
Howitt performing the journey without fatigue. They 
crossed Ben Lomond without a guide, and after enjoy- 
ing the most magnificent spectacle of the clouds alter- 
nately shrouding and breaking away from the chaos of 
mountains around them, were enveloped by a dense 
cloud, and only able to effect their descent with great 
difficulty, and with considerable hazard. They visited 
Loch Katrine, Stirling, Edinburgh, and all the beautiful 
scenery for many miles around it, traversed Fifeshire, 
and then, taking Abbotsford in their route, walked 
through the more Southern parts, visiting many places 
interesting for their historical or poetical associations, 
on to Gretna Green, Where all the villagers turned out 
brimfuU of mirth, supposiiTg they were come there to 
be married, especially as they entered the public house 
■where such matches are completed, and engaged the 
landlord to put them in the way to Carlisle. They 
returned by way of the English lakes, having, as they 
have been frequently heard to declare, enjoyed the 
most delightful jo irn<y ima^iiiaWe. 

Soon after their return, they settled in Nottingham ; 
Mr. Howitt, though actively engaged in business, still 
devoting his leisure to literary pursuits. Here they 
soon published another joint volume of poems, called 
" The Desolation of Eyam," which was received with 
equal favour by the public. The attention which these 
two volumes excited, brought many applications from 
the e(!ilors of Annuals and Magazines; and both Mr. 
and Mrs. Howitt for some years contributed a great va- 
riety of articles to these piiblications. 



WILLIAM AND MARY HOWITT. 113 

Mr. Howiii possesses such versatility that tnere are 
few quarters of hterature in which his contributions 
would not equal the best. His papers in the " Heads 
of the People " were excellent. Mrs. Howitt's ballads 
have the true ballad spirit, and some of them are of 
exceeding sweetness. Her simphcity is without fee- 
bleness, and her occasional openings into power are 
striking and noble. 

The circumstance of their names having become at- 
tached to so many separate articles, now led to a sepa- 
rate publication of volumes. Mrs. Howitt has since 
published '' The Seven Temptations," a dramatic work ; 
" Wood Leighton,"' a prose fiction, and several volumes 
for the young, all of which have acquired deserved 
popularity. 

'Within the last half century, a somewhat new class 
of writing has been introduced into this country with 
great success, and most fortunately for the public taste, 
as its influence is most healthy and sweet, most re- 
freshing and soothing, most joyous, yet most innocent. 
It is that of the unaffected prose pastoral. After Sir 
Philip Sidney's " Arcadia," there was no work which 
had so much of this spirit of the green fields and woods, 
as Walton's " Complete Angler." A long period then 
intervened, and the same feeling can hardly be said to 
have shown itself, excepting in some of the works of 
Mrs. Barbauld, until the time of Burns, and Words- 
worth, and Keats, in poetry, and Miss Mitford and 
Leigh Hunt, in prose. The numerous essays and de- 
lightful papers of Leigh Hunt, and one little work in 
particular, entitled " The Months," together with the 
pastoral sketches of " Our Village," " Belford Regis," 
and " Country Stories," are known to all. TJiese 
works of Miss Mitford, if read by snatches, come over 
the mind as the summer air and the sweet hum of rural 
sounds would float upon the senses through an open 
window in the country; leaving with you for a \/hole 
day, a tradition of fragrance and dew. It is hardly 
necessary to add, that her prose pastorals are all redo- 
lent of a cordial and cheerful spirit. They are the po- 
etry of matter-of fact nature, fresh and at first hand. 
Who would not fain leave their other matters-of-fact, 
to go with these writers to gather hlies of the valley 
from the deep green woods 1 Sooth to say, if the sea- 
sons in E norland were always as they paint them, we 
K 2 



114 WILLIAM AND MARY HOWIXT. 

should all choose to live out of doors, and iK^body would 
catch cold. 

Miss Miiford is undoubtedly at the head of this de- 
lightful, and at present " small family" of prose pasto- 
ral writers. William and Mary Howitt naturally belong 
to it ; and if another were to be named of the present 
time, it would be Thomas Miller. But no one has done 
so much, systematically, and extensively to make us 
famihar with the rural population, both of our own 
country and of Germany, as Mr. Howitt. 

In 1832, Mr. Howitt produced the "Book of the Sea- 
sons," a volume the publication of which was attended 
by a circumstance curious in itself, and which should 
teach young authors not to be discouraged by the opin- 
ions of publishers. The " Book of the Seasons," was 
offered to four of the principal publishing houses and 
rejected by them ; till the author, in disgust, told the 
gentleman in whose hands it was left, to tie a stone to 
the MS., and fling it over London Bridge. At length 
Colburn and Bentley took it: the press with one sim- 
ultaneous cheer of approbation saluted its appearance ;: 
it has since gone through seven large editions. 

In 1834, Mr. Howitt published a work of a very differ- 
ent description, the " History of Priestcraft," which 
ran through six or seven editions, some of them of 
3000 copies each. The work, of course, excited as 
much reprehension from one party as applause from 
another; but the readers of the " Book of lUe Seasons," 
which is full of kindly and gentle feelings, could not 
comprehend how the same spirit could produce both 
these works. The union Is, nevertheless, perfectly 
compatible. 

It should be recollected that Mr. Howitt was born 
and educated a Quaker, and he had imbued himself 
■with the writings and spirit of the first Quakers, who 
were a sturdy race, and suffered much perse,oulion from 
the r'stablished Church. 

In 1835, our author published " Pantika, or Traditions 
of the most Ancient Times," a work of imagination, 
certainly the most ambitious, and not the least success- 
ful, though not the least popular of all Mr. Howitt's 
many admirable productions. But its design, its mate- 
rials and execution are altogether so different frotn ev- 
ery other work of the Howitts, that its claims will be 
more appropriately considered under the head of " Mrs» 



WILLIAM AND MARY HOWITT. 115 

Shelley and the imaginative romance writers," in Vol. 
II. of the present work. 

The publication of the " History of Priestcraft" may 
be said to have driven our author from Nottingham. 
Till then he lived in great privacy; but this volume 
discovered to his townsmen that he possessed political 
opinions. He appeared tnen as the advocate of popu- 
lar rights, and in that town there is a considerable por- 
tion of the population which has always been greatly 
in want of zealous and able leaders. 'I'hese seized on 
Mr. Howitt as a champion unexpectedly found. He 
was in a manner forced at once, and contrary to his 
habits and inclination, into public life. He was called 
upon to arrange and address public meetings. He was 
made an alderman of the borough, and looked to as 
the advocate of all popular meas^ures. It was found 
that, hlihough unused to public speaking, he possessed 
a vehement eloquence which excited his hearers to en- 
thusiasm, and carried them according to his will. A 
speech of his in the Town Hall, on some Irish question^ 
in which he introduced some remarks on O'Connell, so 
agitated his hearers, that they simultaneously announc- 
ed their determination to invite O'Connell to a public 
dinner, which they forthwith did. It was hoped by the 
people of Nottingham that they had found a man am- 
ply capable and willing to advocate their interests; but 
this was not the life which Mr. Howitt had marked out 
for himself. No sphere could have afforded a greater 
opp<trtunity of doing good to his fellow- men than the 
one he now occupied, but to do that it required an inde- 
pendent fortune. Mr. Howitt's was limited; and find- 
ing his time and energies wholly absorbed by extrane- 
ous circumstances, he deemed it his du'y to his chil- 
dren to withdraw to a more secluded place of residence. 
He therefore removed to Esher, in Surrey, a place 
which gave him the fullest retirement, in a beautiful 
country, while it afforded a ready communcatioii with 
the metropolis. There he resided some years. 

Before leaving Nottingham, his fellow-townsmen, in 
a very numerous public meeting, voted him a silver 
inkstand, as an appropriate testimony of their esteem; 
and, before settling at Esher, he and Mrs. Howitt made 
another excursion into the North of England, Scotland, 
and the Western Isles, traversitig the most interesting 
portions of their journey again on foot. They spent a 



116 WILLIAM A. 3 MARY HOWITT. 

short time with Mr. Wordsworth and his family at Ry- 
dal, and in Edinburgh made the personal acquaintance 
of most of the literary and eminent characters there. 
Mr. Howitt also attended a dinner given by the city of 
Edinburgh to the poet Campbell, and being requested to 
give as a toast " the English poets, Wordsworth, Sou- 
they, and Moore," he took the opportunity of pressing 
on the attention of that brilliant company, that if toast- 
ing poets did them honour, the true way to serve them 
was to secure them their "copy-right." 

During Mr. Howitfs residence at Esher, he published 
the " Rural Life of England," having previously tra- 
versed the country literally from the Land's End to the 
Scottish borders, to make himself intimately acquaint- 
ed with the manners and mode of life of the rural pop- 
ulation. The work is eminently popular ; and while it 
is full of the kindly and cheerful spirit of the " Book of 
the Seasons," has yet higher claims to public favour 
even than that most pleasant work, from the more ex- 
alted nature of its subject, and the enlightened and phil- 
osophical views which it takes of society generally. 

In 1838, Mr. Howitt published a work entitled " Col- 
onization and Christianity," a popular history of the 
treatment of the natives by the Europeans in all their 
colonies ; a work which proves that the writer's philan- 
thropic sympathy is not confined to any race or nation, 
and unfolds a dark chapter in the history of human na- 
ture, and which could hardly fail to produce the most 
•extensive and beneficial effects. In fact, the reading of 
this volume led Mr. Joseph Pease, Jun., immediately to 
establish " The British India Society," in which the 
zealous exertions of Mr. Pease have mainly contribu- 
ted to the adoption of a nev/ policy by the East India 
Company, pregnant with the most important benefits to 
this country ; — to the liberation of all their slaves, no 
less than ten millions in number, and to the cultivation 
of cotton, sugar, and other tropical articles for our 
market, by which, if continued, not only will the poor 
population of India be employed, but the manufacturing 
millions of our own country too, by the constant demand 
for our manufactured goods; of which every year al- 
ready brings the most striking and cheering evidences. 

Soon after this, Mr. Howitt published a little book, 
-which has gladdened many a fireside, called " The Boys' 
Country Book," a Genuine hfe of a country boy — being 



WILLIAM AND MARY HOWITT. 117^ 

evidently his own life. The Boys' Country Book waa 
followed by "Visits io Remarkable places, Old Halls, 
Battle Fields, and Scenes illustrative of striking Pas- 
sages in English History and Poetry." This book was 
received with enthusiasm ; and though an expensive 
work, had a large sale, and was followed by a second 
volume. These works soon found a host of imitators, 
and have had the beneficial effect of reminding the pub- 
lic of the valuable stores of historic and poetic inter- 
est scattered over the whole face of our noble country. 
Mrs. Howitt's attention had for years been t-urned to 
works for the young. They were written for the 
amusement and benefit of her own children, and being 
tested by the actual approbation of this little domestic 
auditory, were afterwards published and received with 
equal applause by the young wherever the English 
language extends. Up to this period she had issued; 
— The Sketches of Natural History. — Tales in Verse;, 
and Tales in Prose — Birds and Flowers. — Hymns and 
Fireside Verses.* The popularity of these works in- 
duced a publisher (Mr. Tegg) to propose to Mrs. How- 
itt to write for him a series of "Tales for the People 
and their Children ;" of which ten volumes have already 
appeared, namely ; — 1. Strive and Thrive. — 2. Hope on, 
Hope ever. — 3. Sowing and Reaping. — 4v Who shall be 
Greatest?— 5. Which is the Wiser?— 6. Little Coin 
much Care. — 7. Work and Wages. — 8 Alice Franklin. 
— 9. Love and Money. These volumes liave never 
b en introduced to the public by reviews, and it seems- 
to be a system of Mr. 'I'egg's never to send copies to 
reviews ; nevertheless they have had a vast circulation, 
and are scattered all over America in six-penny re- 
prints. They are in themselves a little juvenile library 
of the most interesting narratives, full of goodness of 
heart, and sincere m(jral principles. Translations of 
"Birds and Flowers" are in progress both in G*^rman 
and Polish, and ail the works of William and Mary 
Howitt are immediately reprinted and extensively cir- 
culated in America. 

Having resided about three years at Esher, Mr. and 
Mrs. Howitt quitted England for a sojourn in Germany. 
They bad for some time had their attention drawn to 

* We must not allow ourselves to be so overcome by n sense of the 
nbnndunce of the HowiUs', as to omit our triltnte to the beauty of Mary 
Howitt'-; poetical productions, which are not, we think, sufficiently estima- 
ted in this article. — Ed. 



118 WILLIAM AND MARY HO WITT. 

German literature ; and the alleged advantages atten- 
ding education in Germany, made them resolve to 
judge for themselves. Attraeted by the beauty of the 
scenery, they took up their head quarters at Heidelberg, 
where their children could steadily pursue their educa- 
tion. Thence, at different times, they visited nearly 
every part and every large city of Germany, assiduously 
exerting themselves bj'' social intercourse with the 
people, as well as by study, to make themselves per- • 
fecily familiar with the manners, spirit, and literature 
of that great and varied nation. During upwards of 
three years thus spent, with the exception of Mrs. 
Howitfs continuing the series of " Tales for the Peo- 
ple," and editing " Fisher's Drawing-Room Scrap-Book," 
which was put into her hands on the decease of L. E. 
L., English literature was now abandoned for the con- 
tinuous study of the German. The result on Mr. How- 
itt's part was the translation of a work written ex- 
pressly for him, "The Student-Life of Germany," con- 
taining the most famous songs and music of the Ger- 
man students. This volume, which was vehemently 
attacked by some of our own newspapers, nevertheless 
received from the principal journals of Germany, the 
highest testimonies of accuracy and mastership of 
translation, and led to numerous applications on the 
part of German publishers for translations of works 
into English, as books for the use of students of Eng- 
lish, one only of which, however, Mr. Howitt found 
time to undertake, — the fanciful story of Peter Schle- 
mill, since published by Schrag of NiJrnberg. After 
After three years' abode and observation, Mr. Howitt 
published his " Social and Rural Life of Germany," 
which was at once well received here, and reprinted in 
Germany with the assertion of the " Allgemeine Zeit- 
uiig," the uiSL ciilicdl journal of Germany, of its being 
the most accurate account of that country ever written 
by a foreigner. 

Perhaps, however, as concerns the English public, 
the most important consequence of Mr. and Mrs. How- 
itt's sojourn in Germany is that they had their attention 
there turned to the la,nguages and literature of the 
North of Europe. They had the pleasure of becoming 
intimately acquainted with an excellent and highly- 
accomplished English family who had spent many 
years in Sweden, and were enthusiastic lovers of its 



WILLIAM AND MARY HO WITT. 119 

literature. With them they immediately commenced 
the study of Swedish, and were so much charmed with 
its affinity, both in form and spirit to the Enghsh, that 
they pursued it with great avidity. The first results 
have been the introduction of the prose tales of Frede- 
rika Bremer, by Mrs. Howitt, to our knowledge ; — a 
new era in our reading world. These charming works, 
so distinguished by their natural domestic interest, their 
faithful delineations, their true spirit of kindliness, 
poetical feeling, good sense, and domestic harmony and 
affection, have produced a sensation unequalled as a 
series since the issue of the Waverley novels, and in 
cheap reprints have been circulated through every 
class and corner of America. The rapidity with which, 
from various circumstances, it has been requisite to 
produce these translations, has, we understand, made 
it necessary, though appearing as a lady's work en- 
tirely in Mrs. Howitt's name, that both Mr. and Mrs. 
Howitl should latterly unite all their activity in transla- 
ting, correcting, and passing them through the press. 

The Hewitts are enthusiastic lovers of their literary 
pursuits, and anxious to educate their children in the 
best possible manner, and therefore live a retired and 
domestic life. Though belonging to the Society of 
Friends, and attached to its great principles of civil, 
moral, and religious liberty, they have long ago aban- 
doned its peculiarities ; and in manners, dress, and 
language belong only to the world. For the honour of 
literature we may safely say, that amongst the many 
consolatory proofs in modern times of how much lite- 
rature may contribute to the happiness of life, the case 
of the Howitts is one of the most striking. The love 
of literature was the origin of their acquaintance, its 
pursuit has been the hand-in-hand bond of the most 
perfect happiness of a long married hfe ; and we may 
further add, for the honour of womanhood, that while 
our authoress sends forth her delightful works in un- 
broken succession, to the four quarters of the globe, 
William Howitt has been heard to declare that he will 
challenge any woman, be she who she may, who never 
wrote a line, to match his good woman in the able 
management of a large household, at the same time 
that she fills her own little world of home with the 
brightness of her own heart and spirit. 



DR. PUSEY. 

"The angelK, in like manner, can utter in a few words singular the things 
which are written in a volume of any book, and can express such things, or 
every word, as elevate its meining to interior wisdom; for their speech is 
such, ihit it is conson int with afiections, and every word with ideas. Ex 
pressions are also varif^d, by an infinity of methods, according to liie series 
of the things which aie in a complex in the thought." — Swedenborg, ''Con 
eerning ti'ie fVisdom of the Angels of Heaven^ 

In the vigorous and very onHiious contest which has 
for a considerable time been raging between dififerent 
sections of the Established Church, it will foiin no part 
of this brief notice to engage, on either side. A work 
like the present cannot, it must be obvious, afford space 
for lengthy and complex disquisition on any subject; 
and least of all would its design accord with controver- 
sies which are usually, in themselves, endless, whether 
on matters of religion, science, or politics. A few- 
broad statements of leading principles and facts are all 
that will be attempted — intended solely for the benefit 
of those who do not know much of the subject, and have 
not time to study the " Tracts," but who wish for some 
concise infornjation. 

This neces.>ary avoidance of theological conflic-ts and 
the inadmissibility of polemical treatises, must also pre- 
vent our taking into the present paper some account 
of Dr. Chalmers, the leader of the High Church party 
in the Presbyterian, as Dr. Pusey is iii the Episcopal 
section of the Protestant Church in this kingdom ; and 
must «-qually prevent any view of the natural opposites 
of both these leaders in their theological aspects ; other- 
wise our design must have included the lectures of W. 
J. Fox, and those of the late Dr. Chaiming, whose trans- 
atlantic birth has not precluded his influence among 
ourselves. Our purpose, however, being limited to the 
consideration of certain novel doctrines which have 
been designated after the name of their originator, the 
followinij remarks are olTered in elucidation. 

Dr. Pusey is the representative of that class of Eng- 
lishmen, who, looking with reprehension and alarm 
upon the changes in the ecclesi^jstical and political 
system of our country which have slowly but constant- 



DR. PUSEl'. IStl 

ly gained ground during the lapse of the last fifteen 
years, have ranged themselves under the freshly em- 
blazoned banners and newly illuminated altars of the 
Church, have unsheathed the sword of Faith and new- 
interpretation, earnest to restore the ancient constitu- 
tion in Church and State ; to stem the advancing tide 
of modern opinion and endeavour ; to retain the strong- 
hold of the Divine Right of Kings and the Spiritual 
Supremacy of the Priesthood, and from this detached 
ground to say to the rising waves, " Thus far shalt thou 
go, and no farther," and to the troubled waters, " Peace 
—be still." 

The first note of alarm was sounded to this class 
when, fifteen years ago, the Repeal of the Test and 
Corporation Act passed the legislature. This measure 
(to use the words of a distinguished member of their 
own body, Mr. Palmer) was, in their eyes, a "cutting 
away from the Church of England of one of its ancient 
bulwarks, and evidencing a disposition to make conces- 
sions to the clamour of its enemies." In the next year, 
called by the same authority " the fatal year 1829," they 
saw the admission of Catholics to posts of trust and 
responsibility, and to a share in the legislation. The 
feelings which animated them now, may be understood 
from the fact that his part in the transaction cost Sir 
Robert Peel his seat in the University of Oxford, and 
from the language of the same authority we have al- 
ready quoted, who described the Emancipation Act as 
" a measure which scattered to the wands public princi- 
ple, pubhc morality, public confidence, and dispersed a 
party, which, had it possessed courage to act according 
to its old and popular principles, and to act on them 
with manly energy, would have stemmed the torrent 
of revolution and averted the awful crisis which was at 
hand." Such was the state of appalled apprehension 
on which the tocsin of revolution in France struck like 
an electric shock in 1830, and on which the echoes re- 
verberated nearer and nearer thunders through the re- 
form agitation in England. "The Tory aristocracy," 
says Mr. Palmer again, " which had forsaken the Church 
in yielding Emancipation, were now hurled from their 
political ascendancy, and the Reform Bill of 1831 — a 
just retribution for their offence — made for the time the 
democratic principle all powerful in the state." Events 
ghded on. The claims of the Dissenters were loudly 
L 



122 DR. PUSEY. 

urged — a severance of Church and State was demand- 
ed — ten Irish Bishoprics were suppressed— even Church 
Rates were in many quarters successfully resisted — and 
Church Reform was actually called for, much in the 
same manner in which Parliamentary Reform had been 
demanded a year or two before ! Struck by these signs 
of the times, by the increase of dissent, the avowedly 
low views of church authority entertained by a majori- 
ty of the clergy and nearly the entire body of the laity, 
the extreme laxity of discipline and graet diversity of 
doctrine pcevailing in the Church, and the tendency to 
further innovation manifesting itself in many, and those 
not unimportant quarters, a few clergymen, chiefly re- 
siding at Oxford and members of the University, formed 
themselves into an association under the title of 
" Friends of the Church." At the head of these was 
Dr. Pusey. 

Edward Bouverie Pusey is the second son of the late 
Hon. Philip Pusey, and grandson of the Earl of Radnor. 
His father assumed the name of Pusey on becoming the 
possessor of Pusey, in the county of Berks, an estate 
held by that family from a period considerably anterior 
lo the Norman conquest, and held under a grant from 
Canute by corna^e, or the service of a horn. The Pusey 
horn is well known to antiquaries. Dr. Pusey was born 
in 1800, and entered the University of Oxford in 1818, 
as a gentleman commoner of Christ Church. His name 
appears in tiie first class in 1822. Shortly afterwards- 
he became a fellow of Oriel College ; in 1824 he obtain- 
ed the prize for the Latin essay, and in 1828 he became 
Regius Professorof Hebrew and Canon of Christ Church. 
In this year he married a lady, since deceased. In 1825 
he had taken the degree of M.A., and at the usual pe- 
riods subsequently took those of B.D. and D.D. Dr. 
Pusey is, therefore, in his 44lh year. He is somewhat 
under the middle size, pale, and of a meditative and in- 
tellectual countenance. As a preacher, he is calm, 
logical and persuasive, and there is an air of sincerity 
about every word which he utters which is never with- 
out its effect. His theological views were at one time 
supposed to be verging towards those of the German 
theologians, but they underwent a very decided change 
before the year 1833, when he became one of the foun- 
ders of the association, out of which sprang the " Tracts 
for the Times." 



DR. PUSEY. 1^3 

Th« first object of this association was to stir up 
clergy and laity to activity and to more zeal for the 
office and authority of the Church, and this was done 
by correspondence, addresses, associations and similar 
means, with very satisfactory results. But inasmuch 
as it was by the press that opposite principles had been 
most successfully inculcated, so the leading members 
of that society determined to issue some short publica- 
tions adapted, as they considered, to the exigencies of 
the times. These publications were not sent forth with 
any corporate authority. The writers spoke only their 
own individual opinions, and no system of revision, 
tliough often recommended, was ever adopted. The 
title given to them was "Tracts for the Times, by 
members of the University of Oxford." Some were 
addressed especially to the clergy, and headed '" ad 
clerimi,'''' others to the laity, headed " ad populum,'''' others 
to both. 

The tenets maintained by the Tract, writers were 
chiefly as follows. They asserted the three-fold order 
of ministry, Bishops, Priests, and Deacons, as essential 
to an apostolic church. They claimed a personal, not 
a merely official, descent from the Apostles, i. e., they 
declared that not only had the Church ever maintained 
the three orders, but that an unbroken succession of 
individuals canonically ordained was enjoyed by the 
Church and essential to her existence ; in short, th;«r 
■without this there could be no Church at all. They held 
the doctrine of baptismal regeneration, of sacramental 
absolution, and of a real, in contradistinction to a figu- 
rative or symbolical, Presence in the Eucharist. 'I'hey 
maintained the duty of fasting, of ritual obedience, and 
of communion with the Apostolic Church, declaring all 
Dissenters, and, as a necessary consequence, the mem- 
bers of the Church of Scotland, and all church(^.s not 
episcopal, to be members of no church at all. Thty de- 
nied the validity of Lay-baptism; they threw out hints 
from time to time, which evidenced an attachment to 
the theological system supported by the nonjuring di- 
vmesin the days of James II. ; and the grand protestant 
principle as established by Luther — the right of private 
interpretation of Holy Scripture — they denied. 

A facetious, but somewhat profane Letter, shortly ap- 
peared, purporting to be " an Epistle from thr Pope, to 
certain members of the University of Oxford," and was 



124 DR. PUSEY. 

extensively circulated. Dr. Pusey replied to this high- 
ly reprehensible Pretender, in a grave and earnest tone, 
deprecating a light and irreligious spirit on a topic of so 
great magnitude and importance. 

The Evangelical party in the Church next objected 
to certain expressions used in the " Tracts," such as 
" conveying the sacrifice to the people" — " entrusted 
with the keys of Heaven and Hell" — " entrusted with 
the awful and mysterious gift of making the bread and 
wine, Chrisfs body and blood''"' — all which expressions 
they considered might perhaps be understood in rather 
a Romanizing way. " The Record," a religious news- 
paper, conducted by gentleme^ of Presbyterian tenets, 
but circulating chiefly among churchmen of Calvinistic 
doctrine, directly accused the Tract writers as Jesuits, 
and covert Papists. The conduct of the Bishops, who 
■who were supposed to favour Dr. Pusey, was watched^ 
their dinner-parties noted, and the disposal of their pa- 
tronage tartly, commented on. The inferior clergy 
were subjected to espionage. If a priest or deacon 
was seen at a ball or concert, his name was sure to ap- 
pear in the next week's " Record" as a musical or a 
dancing clergynj^an, and a Puseyite ; for the term " Pu- 
seyite''"' originated with this journal. The Tracts mean- 
while went steadily on, never replying nor recrimina- 
ting, but continuing to put forth new and more startling 
deviations from the received theology of the day. 

In 1836, a new species of hostility commenced, in 
which the Puseyite party were the assailant. Dr. 
Hampden, canon of Christ Church, and Principal of St. 
Mary Hall, was appointed Regius Professor of Divinity. 
The admirable personal qualities, and the splendid 
abilities of Dr. Hampden, made the man both admired 
and esteemed ; but he had preached a course of Bamp- 
lon Lectures which were considered " rationalistic" — 
or tending to a daring use of the rational faculty, and 
had published a pamphlet ; in which, says Mr. Palmer,, 
"the boldest latitudinarianism was openly avowed, and 
Socinians were placed on a level with all other Chris- 
tians !" His appointment was therefore vigorously op- 
posed by the high Church party ; but the opposition 
being fruitless, an agitation was commenced chiefly by 
the Tract writers, and a formal censure of the Universi- 
ty on Dr. Hampden was passed by an overwhelming 
majority in Convocation. By this censure, the Margaret 
Professor of Divinity was substituted for the Regius 



DR. PUSEY. 125 

Professor, and the attendance of the under graduates 
on the latter, dispensed with. 

Periodicals were now started with the avowed object 
of opposing tiie "Tracts;" and one, "The Church of 
England Quarterly Review," was alluded to in the 
House of Commons, and had two articles, which were 
marked by vehement invective, quoted in " The Times." 
That paper, however, subsequently discovering certain 
inaccuracies, repudiated the articles in question. Thus 
attacked, the Oxford party resolved to have an organ 
of their own; and the "British Critic" being at that 
moment thrown into the market, Dr. Pusey became 
the purchaser, and placed in the post of editor, Mr. 
Newman, the most learned, the most astute, and the 
most practised in controversy of all concerned in the 
tracts. At the same time, Professor Sewell took up 
their cause in the Quarterly Review. 

The singular book called " Froude's Remains," edited 
by Mr. Newman, has been excused by moderate wriiers 
as having been the result of prolonged bad health ; but 
as its editor gravely answered in print, that " Mr. Froude 
was not a man who said anything at random," the sup- 
position, one would think, can scarcely be justified. 
The author, among many, other similar expressions, 
Bpoke of himself and his coadjutors as organizing "a 
conspiracy for the unproteslantizing of the Church ;" — 
he called the Reformation "A limb badly set, which 
required to be broken again ;" and wondered that " * * * 
did not get on faster to hate the reformers." 

The first learned opposition which the Tractarians 
had to encounter was in the work of Dr. Mc I lvalue, 
Bishop of Vermont, in America. In the same year, 
1810, the " Church of England Quarterly" passed into 
other management, and nmintaiiied a firm, consistent 
opposition to the same writers, uniformly, however, 
treating them as gentlemen, scholars, and Christians, 
in April, 1843, it was, however, again placed under its 
former conductors. 

Meanwhile the Tracts themselves had been silenced, 
the Bishop of Oxford having recommended their cessa- 
tion, and been promptly obeyed. The last of the series, 
the celebrated No. 90,* which was avowed by Mr. 
Newman, was pointedly condemned by many of the 
Bishops, and a note of censure passed on it by the 

* The tract called "One Trnct More," printed subsequently to No. 90, 
was written by a well-known poet, and M.P. 

L2 



126 DR. PUSEY. 

Hebdomadal Board. Books, sermons, reviews, charges^ 
memoirs from the Puseyite party, have since manifest- 
ed their determination to continue to be heard through 
the press. 

The excitement was increased by the charge of the 
Bishop of London in 1842, in Mhich he touched on 
some points of ritual observance, apparently favouring 
the Puseyites. A professor of poetry, who never pub- 
lished a single poetical work, has been elected at Ox- 
ford, " because he was not a Puseyite." Mr. Glad- 
stone's two works, " On the Relation of the Church to 
the State," and ' Church Principles," were attacked as 
Puseyite, and Mr. Christmas's treatise on the "Disci- 
pline of the Anglican Church," though touching on no 
disputed point of doctrine, afforded matter of criticism 
for six weeks to a Presbyterian journal on the same 
ground. Old Divinity was now remembered with affec- 
tion. Societies for the publication of neglected old 
divinity have been established, and also, rival societies 
of Anglo-Catholic theology. As a good influence, may 
be noticed the impulse to correct Gothic Architecture, 
to the employment of art in the embellishment of 
churches, and the improvement of the musical part of 
the service. As evidences^ of dissension, we observe, 
one rector advertising for accurate, with — '"No Puseyite 
need apply ;" — another, " No Oxford man will be ac- 
cepted ;" en the other hand, a vicar "wants an assistant 
of sound Anglican views, who is untainted with Eras- 
tianism, and entertains no objection to the daily service, 
the weekly offertory, and to preaching in a surplice !" 
Thus, are the very bowels of Mother Church inflamed 
and convulsed. 

The last public act of Dr. Pusey was the delivery of 
a sermon before the University, in which he was ac- 
cused of advancing the doctrine of transubstantiation. 
Judges appointed by the University have censured him; 
passed a sentence of suspension on him, and condemn- 
ed the sermon as heretical ; but his friends maintain, 
that by not specifying their grounds, the judges have 
laid themselves open to the charges of unfairness and 
severity. It is much to be feared that these doings 
closely resemble many things which maybe discovered 
as far back as the times of Abailard and St. Bernard. 

It is said that Dr. Pusey is about to quit Oxford, and 
to take up his residence at Leeds, where a superb 
church is in process of erection for his ministry. 



G. P. R. JAMES, MRS. GORE, CAPTAIN 
MARRYATT, AND MRS. TROLLOPE. ^ 

" And what o/this new book, that the whole world make such a rout about V^ 
—Sterne. 

" How delightful ! To cut open the leaves, to inhale the fragrance of the 
scarcely-dry paper, to examine the type, to see who is the printer, to launch 
out into regions of thought and invention, (never trod till now,) and to explore 
characters, (that never met a human eye before,) this is a luxury worth sacri- 
ficing a dinner-party, or a few hours of a spare morning to. If we cannot write 
ourselves, we become by busying ourselves about it, a kind of accessaries after 
the fact."— Hazlitt. 

" No sooner did the Housekeeper see them than she ran out of the room in 
great haste, and immediately returned with a pot of holy water and a bunch 
of hyssop, and said, ' Signor Licentiate, take this and sprinkle the room, lest 
some enchanter, of the many these books abound with, should enchant us, in 
revenge for what we intend to do in banishing them out of the world I' The 
Priest smiled at the Housekeeper's simplicity, and ordered the Barber to reach. 
him the books, one by one, that they might see what they treated of; for, per 
haps they might find some that did not deserve to be chastised by fire.'' — Don 
Quixote. 

Prose fiction has acquired a more respectable status 
within the last half century than it held at any previous 
period in English literature. Very grave people, who 
set up to be thought wiser than their neighbours, are no 
longer ashamed to be caught reading a novel. The rea- 
son of this is plain enough. It is not that your conven- 
tional reader has abated a jot of his dignity, or relaxed 
a single prejudice in favour of " hght reading," but that 
the novel itself has undergone a complete revolution. It 
is no longer a mere fantasy of the imagination, a dreamy 
pageant of unintelligible sentiments and impossible in- 
cidents ; but a sensible book, insinuating in an exceed- 
ingly agreeable form — ^just as cunning physicians insin- 
uate nauseous drugs in sweet disguises — a great deal of 
useful knowledge, historical, social, and moral. Most 
people are too lazy to go to the spring-head, and are 
well content to drink from any of the numerous little 
rills that happen to ripple close at hand ; and thus, by 
degrees, the whole surface becomes fertihzed after a 
fashion, and by a remarkably easy and unconscious pro- 
cess. Formerly, a novel was a laborious pretext for 
saying a vs^onderful variety, of fine silly things ; now, it 
is really a channel for conveying actual information, the 



128 G. p. R. JAMES, MRS. GORE, 

direct result of ooservation and research, put together 
with more or less artistic ingenuity, but always keeping 
in view the responsibility due to the living- humanity 
from which it professes to be drawn. Genteel ameni- 
ties and pathetic bombast are gone out ; and even the 
most exquisite universalities of the old school have been 
long since shot with the immense mass of rubbish under 
which they were buried. Crebillon himself slumbers in 
the dust of the well-stocked library, while there is no 
end to the new editions of Scott. 

This elevation of prose fiction to a higher rank, and 
the extension of the sphere of its popularity, may be at 
once referred to the practical nature of the materials 
with which it deals, and the sagacity with which they 
are selected and employed. What Aristotle says of po- 
etry in general may be applied with peculiar force to this 
particular form of narrative— that it is more philosophi- 
cal than history ; for while the latter is engaged with lit- 
eral details of particular facts, which often outrage gene- 
ral probability and never illustrate general principles, the 
former generalizes throughout, and by tracing in natural 
sequence a course of causes and effects w^hich would, in 
all probability, have succeeded each other in the same 
order, under similar circumstances, in real life, it exhib- 
its a more comprehensive picture of human nature, and 
conducts us upon the whole to a profounder moral. If 
the flippant observation be true, that History is Philos- 
ophy teaching by example, then it must be admitted that 
she sometimes teaches by very bad example? ; but when 
she condescends to teach through the medium of fiction, 
she certainly has no excuse for not selecting the best. 

The attempt to establish a sort of junction between 
history and romance — the Amandas and the Marguerites 
of Valois, the half-fabulous Rolands and the veritable 
Richards — was a lucky conception. We have not the 
least notion to whom the honour of having origina- 
ted the historical novel fairly belongs. Certainly not to 
Scott, to whom it is so commonly attributed. Miss Lee 
was beforehand with him, and Miss Porter, and twenty 
others — to say nothing of De Foe, who seems to have 
given a broad hint of the practicability of such a project 
in two or three of his inimitable fact-fiction memoirs. 
We suspect that the idea of the historical novel grew up 
slowly, that nobody had the courage to make so free 
with history all at once, and that it became developed at 



CAPT. MARRYATT, AND MRS. TROLLOPE. 12^ 

last only by the sheer necessity of devising something 
new, consequent upon the exhaustion of every existing 
mode of fiction. The germ of this brave conception, if 
we w^ere disposed to pursue the enquiry in a learned 
spirit, might, perhaps, be found in the Ethiopics of He- 
liodorus, which dates so far back as the fourth century, ;; 
and which is in some sort historical, since it presents t 
an accurate and curious picture of the customs of an-| 
cient Egypt.* But we have no occasion to travel into ^ 
such remote paths of investigation. With Froissart and ! 
Monstrelet before us, the " Helden Buch," the " Nibe- ' 
lungen Lied," the " Chronicles of the Cid," and the old 
Spanish and French romances, we can be at no loss to 
discover how the historical novel gradually put forth its 
strength and enlarged its stature, until in course of time 
it grew to its present height and importance. The po- 
etical spirit in which the chronicle writers treat the best 
established historical reputations, the atmosphere of 
imagination they throw round the most ordinary facts, ' 
and the skill with which they relate their narratives, 
mingling the dramatic tact of the raconteur wilh the sobri- 
ety of the historian, may be regarded as having accom- 
plished the first grand advance towards the disputed 
boundary. The subsequent progress was easy enough; 
nor can it be a matter of much surprise, when once the 
invasion was fairly efl'ectedjto find the two hitherto dis- 
tinct races mixed and confounded together on the fron- , 
tier of the two hitherto hostile territories. If there be 
romance writers who have taken upon themselves the 
functions of history, it cannot be denied, on the other 
hand, that there are historians who have not hesitated 
to appear in the masquerade of romance. 

Of all historical novelists, Scott justly occupies the 
first place. If he did not create that kind of composi- 
tion, he was the first who brought it into general favour. 
The secret was no sooner unfolded, by which the annals : 
of nations could thus be rendered tributary to the most 
fascinating shapes of romance, than hundreds of imita- t 
tors started up. Everybody thought he could write an ' 
historical novel, and accordingly there was not a nook 
or corner of history that was not ransacked for materi- 

* The " Cyropaedia" of Xenophon has a still earher claim ; but either of 
these derivations makes the historical fiction coincident with the origin of 
prose romance. Madame de Genlis, in her " Memoires." claims precedence 
of Scott, who she says was her imitator. — Ed. 



130 G. p. R. JAMES, MRS. GORE, 

als. Nor was this excitement confined merely to Eng- 
land. It rapidly spread over every part of the civilized 
^vorld, and seized upon every language that had a print- 
ing-press to give utterance to its inspirations. Even 
bleak and uncultivated Norway is warmed into enthusi- 
asm by the genius of Ingemann, and Russia herself, 
whose national literature is scarcely half a century old, 
boasts of her own especial Walter Scott, with some 
dozens of followers trooping at his heels. 

It is not too much to say that the most successful of 
those who have trodden the same track in England, is 
G. P, R. James.* There is no writer, of his particular 
class, now living, so familiar to the public at large; not 
one who has drawn so extensively upon sources not al- 
ways accessible to the readers of novels ; not one who 
has laboured with such unremitting diligence, and such 
uniform popularity. If he has never greatly succeeded, 
■we know no instance in which he has greatly failed. 

The voluminousness — we choose the word advisedly 
for the occasion — of Mr. James's writings is the idea in- 
stantly suggested to the mind upon the bare mention of 
his name. The first thing you think of is the enormous 
quantity of books he has written. You fancy a man 
seated at a table in the centre of a commodious library, 
with the gift of perpetual motion in his wrist, as incapa- 
ible of fatigue in brains or fingers as the steam-apparatus 
that liatches eggs, and possessed with a terrible deter- 
mination of blood to the head — relieving itself instinct- 
ively by a fearful resolution to write on — on — on — du- 
ring secula seculoi'um, at all hazards to gods, men and 
columns, "till the great globe itself," &c. Fifty other 
strange notions of a like bewildering kind rise up and 
Gurround this image of an inexhaustible author ; and the 
more you attempt to close with the phenomenon, the 
more incomprehensible it becomes, like a dim perplex- 
ing figure in a dream. 

We have not the means of verifying the number of 
Mr. James's publications, nor the period within which 
they were produced. But, we believe, we are sufficient- 
ly accurate for general purposes in saying that he com- 
menced his career about fifteen years ago, and that from 
that time to the present, he has published nearly two 

* Mr. James may be, numerically, the most popular of all the historical ro- 
mancists, but we are far from considering him as the equal of the author of 
" Rienzi" and the " Last Days of Pompeii."— Ed. 



CAPT. MARRYATT, AND MRS. TROLLOPE. 131 

novels, or histories, annually. In a catalogue of works 
pirated from English authors by Baudry of Paris, dated 
1841, we find no less than twenty-one substantial three- 
voUimed novels by Mr. James, which the worthy smug- 
gler, having no duty to pay for copy-right, is enabled to 
offer to the travelling English, and the travelled French, 
at the small charge of five francs each work. Mr. James 
has suffered heavily by this nefarious system of litera- 
ry plunder ; and to his incessant exertions for the pro- 
tection of English copy-rights we are mainly indebted 
for the small amount of security we now enjoy through 
the vigilance of the custom-house officers. All that can 
be done in the absence of a law of international copy- 
right, is to prevent the importation of these swindling 
editions ; and this, we believe, is now done as carefully 
as such an office can be expected to be fulfilled by the 
class of persons to whom it is unavoidably entrusted. 

The French catalogue to which we have referred, is 
of course a very imperfect guide to Mr. James's com- 
plete works ; but it will help the imagination a little on 
the way. In addition to all these novels, there are yet 
lo be piled up histories and biographies of every class 
and kind, so that by the time we shall have arrived at 
the top of the heap, we shall be well disposed to stop- 
and vent our wonder in one long heave of respiration. 
If all these works were gathered together, and a scriv- 
ener employed to copy them, it would probably occupy 
him a longer period of fair average daily labour in the 
simple task of transcription than the author expended 
upon their composition. To those who know how much 
more rapidly the invention works than the hands — how 
immeasurably the brain outstrips the mechanical pro- 
cess of the pen — this assertion will neither be new nor 
surprising. Yet still there remains behind this prob- 
lem, — how Mr. James, although he might compose fast- 
er than another person could copy, contrived both to 
compose and write so much within so short a period! 
But the problem is set at rest by the fact that Mr. James 
did not write any of his works. Like Cobbett, he em- 
ploys an amanuensis, and all this long and brilliant array 
of historical narratives with which the public have been 
so pleasantly entertained for such a series of years have 
been dictated by the author, while he was walking up 
and down his study, one after another, or, sometimes,, 
possibly, two or three at a time ! 



132 G. p. R. JAMES, MRS. GORE, 

The usages of authors are proverbially capricious. 
Cuvier, says " Punch," (and " Punch" is as good an au- 
thority in such matters as Bayie or Johnson,) used to 
dip his head and feet into cold water while he was prepa- 
ring his great work, the " Regne Animal !" There is no 
reason on earth why Mr. James should not dictate his 
novels, if the habit suits and pleases him. But to one 
who is not in the habit of dictating novels, the process 
seems peculiarly unfavourable to the due attainment of 
the end proposed. One can understand Cobbett's dicta- 
tion — its uses and abuses. The dashing articles of the 
*' Register" are distinguished by the heedless energy and. 
volubility of impromptu. It is the very style adapted 
for quick popular effects — to be read on the sudden, and 
set the head whirling, and the hand aching for a petition 
to sign, or a second Peterloo ; just the sort of headlong 
accumulation of facts and accusations a popular leader, 
who thoroughly understood the elements he had to 
wield, and who possessed a genius capable of moulding 
them to his purpose, might pour out with the greatest 
imaginable triumph. All this is intelligible enough ; but 
the application of the same method of composition to 
the machinery and conduct of a narrative romance is 
inexplicable. The necessity of carrying on the plot by 
constant references to past scenes, of anticipating events 
in some cases, and preparing for them in all; and of 
working up carefully and by reiterated touches in dia- 
logue and action, the delicate and shifting traits of char- 
acter, so as to preserve the consistency and dramatic 
integrity of the general design ; these necessities, and 
many more which might be easily pointed out in the 
structure of a well-considered novel, would seem to ren- 
der it nearly impossible to deliver orally three volumes 
of such matter, so connected and continuous, so reticu- 
lated and arranged, so true to life, so varied, and so ar- 
tistical, in form, movement, and treatment. It is al- 
most impossible to imagine any man speaking a novel. 
Yet Mr. James constantly performs this curious feat — 
more curious to our apprehension a hundred times than 
if he were to write his novels in his sleep. 

One obvious advantage of this improvisation is, that 
it has enabled the author to carry on his labours with 
that njarvellous celerity to which we are indebted for 
the amazing quantity. It is not likely that he could 
have produced so much in so short a period, had he been 



CAPT. MARRYATT, AND MRS. TROLLOPE. 133 

held ill check by the slower process of pen and ink, with 
all its provoking suggestiveness, its eye-traps at every 
turn of a sentence, its awkward gaps, and hitches, and 
flaws of style, to the mending of which thought and 
spirit are so frequently sacririced. On the other hand, 
it may be reasonably doubted whether what might have 
been thus lost in quantity might not have been gained 
in quality. If he had written less he would have writ- 
ten better — there would have been more ultimate {)ur- 
pose in his writings, more condensation, vigour, and 
vitality. 

We are very far from thinking that quantity is an ar- 
gument, a priori, against the originality or strength of 
genius. It is a common notion to suppose that he who 
writes a great deal must necessarily dilute and weaken 
his resources ; that writing upon a variety of subje(;ts, it 
is impossible to write well upon any. This is a vulgar 
error of the most ignorant kind. He who can write 
well upon only one subject, or whose capacity cannot 
accomplish more than a little upon any. is not very like- 
ly to be mistaken by the world for a genius. The great- 
ness of the intellect consists as much in its fullness as 
its profundity. The most remarkable authors in all 
ages have been amongst the most prolific — instance, 
Chaucer, Voltaire, Dryden, Swift, Lope de Vega, Goethe, 
Scott, &c. But there is no universal dictum on the sub- 
ject ; each case must be determined finally by the char- 
acter of the productions themselves. Copiousness with- 
out power is mere mental imbecility — drivelling upon 
paper. 

It is not entirely, therefore, because Mr. James has 
written so much, that we think he might have done bet- 
ter had he written less. The manner of coniposition 
has had something to do with it, and is mainly answer- 
able for that uniformity of style, that smooth onward 
flat over which the narrative rolls with such regularity, 
and that want of compactness in details, which, with all 
our admiration of the versatile talents of the author, we 
constantly feel in these very clever and very numerous 
novels. If he had not drawn so extensively upon his- 
tory, and availed himself so largely of characters whose 
lineaments were already fatniliar to the reader, these de- 
ficiencies would have been still more apparent. But, 
fortunately, the reader is enabled by his previous knowl- 
edge to fill up many of the faint and hasty outlines of 
M 



134 G. p. R. JAMES, MRS. GOREy 

the author, an involuntary process which frequently 
atones for the short-comings of the fiction. 

The " fatal facility" of these novels must be apparent 
to the most superficial critic. It is impossible not to see 
that they have been hurried out pell-mell, with wonder- 
ful self-reliance and an almost constitutional contempt 
of system and responsibility. The fluency of the man- 
ner is not more palpable than the diffusiveness of the 
matter. The figures are in eternal motion; the dialogue 
seems everlasting; the descriptions have the breadth 
and incoherency and joyous flush of a stage diorama. 
The flurry of the incidents, the number of the charac- 
ters, and the mass of subordinate details that stifle the 
main action, leave upon the memory a very confused 
sense of the particular merits or final aim of the story. 
Looking back upon the whole series, one is apt, from 
the homogeneity, or family-hkeness, which pervades 
them, to mistake one for another, to run Darnley into 
Richelieu, or jumble up De L'Orme with De Leon. 
This indistinctness arises from want of care and reflec- 
tion in the preliminary settlement of a definite design. 
The novel seems to be begun and finished at a single 
heat, while the first thought was still fresh, and before 
time had been allowed to examine its capabilities, or 
shape it to an end. The consequences of this indiscre- 
tion rise up in judgment against the author in every 
page. There is no repose in the action, the portraiture, 
the embroidery, the scenery, to give leisure for the 
reader to take in the vital elements of the subject, or for 
the prominent personages to grow out into their full and 
natural proportions, and fix themselves calmly, but forci- 
bly, upon his attention. 

Novels written upon this plan, or rather absence of 
plan, may be, as they are, admirable novels of costume; 
they may even lay claim to the higher distinction of be- 
ing capital illuminations, worthy of being let into the 
margin of history; but they must not be confounded 
with that class of historical or real-life novels in which 
all other considerations are subservient to the delinea- 
tion of human nature. 

Fortunately these faults are not of a kind to mar very 
materially the pleasure of the bulk of novel- readers; 
who, moreover, find too many sources of rational enjoy- 
ment in Mr. James's books not t» be ready to compound . 



CAPT. MARRYATT, AND MRS. TROLLOPE. 135 

all their sins of execution for their research and good 
sense— qualities so very rare in modern fictions. 

The historical research evinced in them is very con- 
siderable ; much more varied and extensive than the au- 
thor is ever likely to get credit for from the multitude. 
, People are apt to take history in this shape for granted, 
: without troubling themselves to look beyond the page 
before them for any further satisfaction of their curios- 
ity. But if they were to follow out the suggestions of 
the narrative, to read up to the point of interest selected 
by the author, and to render themselves familiar with 
the life of the period, so as to be able to grasp it in all 
its aspects, they would begin to perceive that the works 
which they had been accustomed to regard merely as 
pleasant pastime, are frequently the fruits of severe in- 
vestigation. The historical novelist must know a great 
deal more than he can exhibit in his novels ; he must 
have laid all the adjacent fields of enquiry under tribute, 
and mastered many details lying outside the topic, lime, 
and country, he has chosen for his canvass. He cannot 
■cram for the occasion. His collateral studies are as in- 
dispensable to his purpose as side-hghts to the stage 
where the action would proceed in comparative dark- 
ness without them, although they are themselves al- 
ways kept out of sight. 

h\ this respect Mr. James's novels are entitled to high 
commendation. They embrace a wide scope of reading, 
including nearly all ages and countries. Mr. James, 
indeed, seems to have an especial genius for this discur- 
sive style of historical literature, and ranges with equal 
ease through the camp of A^ttila and the salons of Louis 
Quatorze. In French history he is particularly at 
home; and the whole vocabulary of chivalry is at his 
fingers' ends. To say that he has not sometimes adapt- 
ed history to his own ends, would be to claim for him a 
merit he would scarcely set up for himself; but it may 
be safely asserted that of all historical novelists he is, 
beyond comparison, the most faithful and conscientious. 
He rarely exceeds the fair license of idealizing his ma- 
terials ; he seldom makes his prominent historical per- 
sonages responsible for public acts which he cannot 
verify by authorities ; and he always presents them in 
as strict keeping with their admitted hneaments and 
characteristics, as can reasonably be expected under 
the new circumstances in which he |iuds it necessary 



136 G. p. R. JAMES, MRS. GORE, 

to place them. For this reason we prefer his professed 
fictions to his professed biographies. They are closer 
to the mark «f real life. They bring out the portrait 
more distinctly, surrounded by accessories that assist us 
to a more intimate view of its features. The habit of 
writing fiction has given a dangerous freedom to his 
niHuner of dealing with facts, which communicates its [ 
influence, more or less, to his purely historical labours..? 
He works up a history in the picturesque spirit of a ro-; 
mance ; and, although it is to the full as trustworthy as 
many much duller works, one cannot help being struck 
by its deficiencies in closeness of texture and weight of 
style. 

On the other hand, there seems to be no limit to his 
ingenuity, his faculty of getting up scenes and incidents, 
dilemmas, artifices, contre temps, battles, skirmishes, dis- 
guises, escapes, trials, combats, adventures. He accu- 
mulates names, dresses, implements of war and peace, 
oflficial retinues, and the whole paraphernalia of customs 
and costumes with astounding alacrity. He appears to 
have exhausted every imaginable "situation," and to 
have described every available article of attire on rec- 
ord. What he must have passed through — what tri- 
umphs he must have enjoyed — what exigencies he must 
have experienced — what love he must have suffered — 
what a grand wardrobe his brain must be ! He has made 
some poetical and dramatic efforts ; but this irresistible 
tendency to pile up circumstantial particulars is fatal to 
those forms of art which demand intensity of passion. 
In stately narratives of chivalry and feudal grandeur, 
precision and reiteration aae desirable rather than inju- 
rious — as we would have the most perfect accuracy 
and finish in a picture of ceremonials ; and here Mr. 
James is supreme. One of his court romances is a 
book of brave sights and heraldic magnificence — it is the 
next thing to moving at our leisure through some su- 
perb and august procession. 

All his works, without distinction, are pervaded by 
moral feehng. There is a soul of true goodness in 
them — no maudlin affectation of virtue, but a manly rec- 
titude of aim which they derive direct from the heart of 
the writer. His enthusiastic nature is visibly impressed 
upon his productions. They are full of his own frank 
and generous impulses — impulses so honourable to him 
in private life. Out of his books, there is no man more 



CAPT. MARRYATT, AND MRS. TROLLOPE. 137 

sincerely beloved. Had he not even been a distinguish 
«d author, his active sympathy in the cause of letters 
•would have secured to him the attachment and respect 
of his contemporaries. 

If we had prescribed to oui selves in this desuilory 
criticism anything like a distinct plan, we should be ter- 
ribly puzzled to assign a satisfactory reason for turning 
from Mr. James to Mrs. Gore. They are neither so 
like nor unlike as that one should be suggestive of the 
other. But we have no plan at all — beyond that of 
illustrating two or three popular phases of our prose fic- 
tion through two or three of its master-spirits; and the 
name of Mrs. Gore occurs to us as one of the most con- 
spicuous. Within the last eight or nine years she has 
distanced nearly all her contemporaries by a rapid suc- 
cession of some of the most brilliant novels in our lan- 
guage. 

The only element we can discover in common be- 
tween Mr. James and Mrs. Gore, is that marvellous ca- 
pacity of production by which they are both so well 
known in the circulating libraries. Wherever you see 
a board hung out at the door of a provincial or suburban 
library, containing a list of the last batch of new books, 
you may be quite certain of finding Mrs. Gore and Mr. 
James prodigiously distinguished at the head of it in. 
Brobdignagian letters. They are the Penates of the 
subscription shops. Their "last" is ever fresh and nev- 
er wanting — when the season sets in, they set in, and as 
punctually as the booksellers' circular is published, they 
are published. Whatever irregularities may mark the 
appearances of Bulwer, or Horace Smith, or Morier, 
none are perceptible in their appearances. The dead 
months of the year alone intervene — they are as sure to 
come out with the earliest spring and winter advertise- 
ments, as the scribe of the mysterious " Evening pa- 
per" is sure, by some inexplicable means, to anticipate 
the merits of every one of Mr. Colburn's new publica- 
tions. 

But accustomed as the public are to this constant and 
undeviatmg fertility, they can form, nevertheless, only 
an imperfect notion of the surprising industry of Mrs. 
Gore. Apprehensive of risking her well-earned popu- 
larity by taxing the indulgence of her admirers too 
heavily, or, perhaps, of bringing herself within the lash 
of the old saw, that easy writing is not always the easi- 
M 2 ~ 



138 G. p. R. JAMES, MRS. GORE, 

est reading, she has given many of her productions to 
the world anonymously. Many and many a time has 
some innocent country squire pondered over a new 
novel with most critical delight, and prophesied a fa- 
mous literary destiny for its unknown author, little sus- 
pecting that it sprang from the well-known "Roman 
hand" to which he was indebted for a similar pleasure 
only a week or two before. Publishers have been some- 
times compelled to run a race for priority in bringing 
out her works ; so that it has happened that two of her 
novels, appearing in the same week, have been actually 
made to oppose each other in the market. Profound 
must be the arts of the bibliopolic craft by which a 
woman can thus be turned into her own rival. 

In addition to these original productions, acknowledg- 
ed and unacknowledged, including all sorts of contribu- 
tions to periodicals, Mrs. Gore has executed some trans- 
lations from the French, and given several small dramas 
to the stage ; such as the " Maid of Croissy," " The 
Tale of a Tub," "The Sledge-Driver," &c., all founded 
upon, if not taken from, French originals. She has also 
written a comedy called " The School for Coquettes," 
and others; but they will scarcely increase her reputa- 
tion. So fluent and spontaneous a writer was not likely 
to restrain herself within dramatic forms, without losing 
much of her natural spirit; and she is still less likely 
ever to subdue her teeming eloquence down to the brev- 
ity of expression so essential to what may be properly 
called dramatic language. She might conceive a com- 
edy admirably in three volumes, but it is nearly impos- 
sible she could write one in five acts. 

It is well known in the literary circles that Mrs. Gore 
is the author of that clever, but surpassingly impudent 
book, " Cecil." We believe she has never avowed it, 
and has rather, on the contrary, kept up a little mysti- 
fication about it. But there is really no doubt on the 
subject. She wrote the story, and Mr. Beckford helped 
her to the learning. The public have been often per- 
plexed by Mrs. Gore's Greek and Latin, which, although 
they were never paraded so impertinently as the poly- 
glott pretensions of Lady Morgan, were still remote 
enough from the ordinary course of female accomplislv- 
meiiis to startle the public. Where they came from on 
former occasions we know not; but in this instance 
they may be referred to Mr. Beckford, together with th^ 



CAPT. MARRYATT, AND MRS. TROLLOPE. 139 

Still more recondite scraps of far-off tongues that are 
scattered through the work. 

" Cecil" is a perfect representation of the worst, but 
certainly the most dazzHng aspect of Mrs. Gore's ge- 
nius. It abounds in flashy, high-mettled fashionable 
slang, and is thrown off in such a vein of upsetting ego- 
tism, with such a shew of universal knowledge, and io 
a style of such dashing effrontery, that it carries the 
multitude fairly off their legs. There never was a novel 
written at such a slapping pace. The fearlessness of. 
the execution diverts attention from its deficiencies as' 
a work of art, and helps in a great degree to conceal 
the real poverty of the conception. But books of this 
class will not endure the test of re-perusal. Their shal- 
lowness becomes palpable at the second reading, even 
to those who have not sufficient discernment to detect 
it at once. 

As there is nothing so intolerable as dulness, so there 
is nothing so attractive as vivacity. And this is the 
predominant quality which has ensured the success of 
" Cecil." The unflagging gaiety by which the story is 
lighted up, puts the reader into the best possible humour 
with himself and the author. When this temper of mu- 
tual good-will is attained by any means, the result is 
safe. But critics must not suffer their judgment to be 
taken by storm in this way. They must look a little 
below the surface, and satisfy themselves as to the con- 
gruity of the fable, the truthfulness of the characters, 
and the general bearing of the whole design. To sub- 
ject the motley " Cecil" to such an ordeal would be an" 
act of great cruelty. It would be the breaking of a very 
charming butterfly on a wheel of torture. The plot is 
frequently absurd and sometimes improbable — the 
prominent figures are at best clever exaggerations of 
an artificial state of society — and the moral, K that be 
the right name for the final impression it leaves upo5i 
the mind, is an unprofitable exposition of selfishness 
and sensuality, and of aristocratic talents steeped to 
rottenness in the most debasing vices. The second se- 
ries was an attempt to redeem " Cecil," but, like most 
second series, the experiment was felt on all hands to 
be a failure. 

We have referred to " Cecil" for the purpose of get- 
ting rid at once of all our objections to Mrs. Gore as 
a novelist. Wherever she has elsewhere missed a 



140 G. p. R. JAMES, MRS. GORE, 

complete triumph, it has generally arisen from the in- 
trusion of this same spirit of coxcombry. As a painter 
of society, possessing knowledge of human nature, she 
leaves the Richardsons and Brookes far behind. The 
elasticity of her manner is perfectly unrivalled. If she 
rarely reaches the quiet humour of Madame D'Arblay, 
and never realizes the Dutch fidelity of Miss Austen, 
she preserves, upon the whole, a more sustained flight 
than either.* Although nearly all her novels belong to 
the same genus, and are minted off with nearly the same 
pattern, they do not fatigue or disappoint the reader. 
Their buoyancy imparts to them a perpetual youth. 

Mrs. Gore's views of English society are not always 
founded on actual observation. Sometimes, out of 
sheer impatience of time and thought, she drops into 
the old traditions of fashionable life, as they have de- 
scended to us in the plays and novels of the last centu- 
ry, making her lords and ladies move about like per- 
sons in a masquerade who have come to play allegor- 
ical characters and shew off their finery, instead of be- 
ing engaged in the bona fide business of life. Yet she 
presents this false picture with so much tact and adroit- 
ness, and colours it so superbly, that, with all our con- 
sciousness of its unreality, we feel it to be irresistibly 
amusing. Genius alone can thus invest shadows Avith 
interest; and there is a fehcity in Mrs. Gore's genius 
which gives piquancy and effect to everything she 
touches. When she sets herself in earnest to sketch 
the aristocracy, she shew^s how little necessity she has 
for reflecting in her faithful pages artificial modes that 
have been long since extinct, or cobweb refinements 
that never existed. She never succeeds so well as in 
that class of experienpes which come within her own 
immediate observation. Her gentry are capital. She 
excels in the portraiture of the upper section of the mid- 
dle class, just at the point of contact with the nobility, 
where their own distinguishing traits are modified by 
the peculiarities of their social position. The firmness 
and subtlety with which she traces them through all 
their relations, political and domestic ; the almost mas- 
culine energy she throws into her vivid details of party 

* We hardly feel at ease in the above classification of Richardson with the 
author of the " Fool of Quality." We also think that Miss Austen preserves 
a very sustained flight ; it may be near the ground, but she never fl,ags in a 
feather.— Ed. 



CAPT. MAERYATT, AND MRS. TROLLOPE. 141 

intrigue, from the public contentions in parliamen!: to 
the secret conspiracies of the club and the boudoir; and 
the consummate sagacity she displays in unveiling to 
its very household recesses the interior life that pants 
under all this external tumult, wrong-headed and hollow- 
hearted, proud, sensitive and irritable — are solid quali- 
ties upon which she may safely repose for the verdict of 
posterity. 

Her parvenues are quite equal in their way to any ex- 
amples of the kind in our language, without being de- 
graded by superfluous grossness, or farcical expedients. 
They are not labelled like fools and jesters, but made 
to work out their ends by their own lusty vanities, and 
by the unsuspecting sincerity with which they eternally 
strive against the grain of their unfitness. She lets 
their humanity rise superior to the humour she raises 
at their expense, and sometimes even flings a tinge of 
sadness over their hopeless exclusion from the circles 
to which they aspire. She does not hesitate to exhibit 
them, on occasion, like the poor Peri crouched at the 
gate of Paradise with the opal light falling through a 
chink on her folded wings. She is not unmindful of 
the pathetic truth that wells up to the surface of all mis- 
directed eff'orts and false enthusiasm, even through the 
most ludicrous association of ideas. It is this truth 
■which makes " Don Quixote," to those who perceive its 
true meaning, one of the most profomidly melancholy 
books in the world. 

If we wanted a complete contrast to Mrs. Gore, we 
have i-t at hand in Mrs. Trollope. The class to which 
she belongs is, fortunately, very small ; but it will al- 
ways be recruited from the ranks of the unscrupulous, 
so long as a corrupt taste is likely to yield a trifling 
prtjflt. She owes everything to that audacious con- 
tempt of public opinion, which is the distinguishing- 
mark of persons who are said to stick at nothing. No- 
thing but this sticking at nothing could have produced 
some of the books she has written, in which her won- 
derful impunity of face is so remarkable. Her consti- 
tutional coarseness is the natural element of a low pop- 
ularity, and is sure to pass for cleverness, shrewdness, 
and strength, where cultivated judgment and chaste in- 
spiration would be thrown away.* Her books of travel 

* Still, we subtnit that the critic does not admit enough on the other side.. 



142 G. p. R. JAMES, MRS. GORE, 

are crowded with plebeian criticisms on works of art 
and the usages of courts, and are doubtless held in great 
esteem by her admirers, who love to see such things 
overhauled and dragged down to their own level. The 
book on America is of a different class. The subject 
exactly suited her style and her taste, and people look- 
ed on at the fun as they would at a scramble of sweeps 
in the kennel ; while the reflecting few thought it a lit- 
tle unfair in Mrs. Trollope to find fault with the man- 
ners of the Americans. Happy for her she had such a 
topic to begin with. Had she commenced her literary 
career with Austria or France, in all likehhood, she 
would have ended it there. 

But it is to her novels she is chiefly indebted for her 
current reputation; and it is here her defects are most 
glaringly exhibited. She cannot adapt herself to the 
characterization requisite in a work of fiction : she can- 
not go out of herself: she serves up everything with 
the same sauce : the predominant flavour is Trollope 
still. The plot is always preposterous, and the actors 
in it seem to be eternally bullying each other. She 
takes a strange delight in the hideous and revolting, and 
dwells with gusto upon the sins of vulgarity. Her sen- 
sitiveness upon this point is striking. She never omits 
an opportunity of detaihng the faults of low-bred peo- 
ple, and even goes out of her way to fasten the stigma 
upon others who ought to have been more gently tas- 
selled. Then her low people are sunk deeper than the 
lowest depths, as if they had been bred in and in, to the 
last dregs. Nothing can exceed the vulgarity of Mrs. 
Trollope's mob of characters, except the vulgarity of 
her select aristocracy. That is transcendent — it caps 
the climax. 

We have heard it urged on behalf of Mrs. Trollope, 
that her novels are, at all events, drawn from life. So 
are sign-paintings. It is no great proof of their truth 
that centaurs and grifiins do not run loose through her 
pages, and that her men and women have neither hoofs 
nor tails. The tawdriest wax-works, girt up in paste 
and spangles, are also " drawn from life ;" but there 
ends the resemblance. 

Foremost amongst the novelists who really do " draw 
from hfe," is Captain Marryatt. Were it necessary to 

We think Mrs. Trollope is clever, shrewd, and strong ; as certainly as that 
Mrs. Gore has a bright wit.— Ed 



CAPT. MARRYATT, AND MRS. TROLLOPE. 143 

seek any excuse for occasional blemishes in his tales, 
£he best that could be found is, that they are, more or 
less, indigenous to the soil he turns up. The life-like 
earnestness of his sketches may generally be urged 
with confidence in vindication of any faults which may 
be detected in them by prudish or captious readers. 
Captain Marryatt is the antipodes of a fine writer. His 
English is always rough-cast, and his style frequently 
crude and slovenly. But this negligence of forms only 
heightens the substantial interest of the matter. He 
tells a story like one who has his heart in it, and who 
is indifferent to everything but his facts. The veracity 
of his fictions, if we may use the expression, constitutes 
their permanent charm. 

Few novelists have ever more distinctly shown, that 
the secret of success in works of this description is 
close adherence to nature. There are no dramatic per- 
plexities in his books, no fluent descriptions, no turgid 
appeals to the imagination: his narratives are simple 
and progressive ; he never uses a word more than he 
actually wants ; and the class from which he generally 
selects his characters, cannot certainly be considered 
very attractive to the public at large. Yet his novels 
are read with breathless curiosity in the most refined 
circles, as well as in those to whose sympathies they 
are more directly addressed. By what means does he 
so successfully attain this result? By fidelity to the 
nature he professes to delineate. There is literally no- 
thing else in his books to fascinate attention. But, then, 
this " like Aaron's serpent swallows up the rest." 

Coincident with his inherent truthfuhiess is the total 
absence of egotism and affectation. You never feel the 
author looking in upon you through the curtains of the 
story to see how you like him. There is no personal 
idiosyncrasy thrust upon you ; no literary vanity sus- 
pending the action to let the author survey himself in 
the glass ; the story predominates to the entire exclu- 
sion of the authorship, and might have been written by 
A. B. or C, as well as by Marryatt, for all the reader 
has any reason to know. 

It is the " one touch of nature," that makes people 
who are technically ignorant of ships and seamen, and 
of the seaward Hfe, articulated so correctly in Captain 
Marryatt's books, feel so strong an interest in the for- 
tunes of his heroes. Their individuality rises up palpa* 



144 G. p. R. JAMES, MRS. GORE, ETC. 

bly under his hands. The vicissitudes through which 
they pass may be new and foreign, but their humani'^y 
is intelligible and familiar. His characters, whatever 
may be iheir rank, are appropriate to the place and bu- 
siness in which they are engaged ; they are acting pre- 
cisely as you would expect such men to act in such cir- 
cumstances ; they are surrounded by the essentials of 
their condition ; and a practical property and consisten- 
cy, the perfection of art in its kind, invariably presides 
over their language and conduct. You become gradu- 
ally intimate with them, and are affected at last by a 
pure sympathy in their way of life ; and thus a race, pe- 
culiar in Itself, and remote from the daily intercourse of 
the world, is made to reach and agitate the universal 
heart. 

Of course we do not apply this description indiscrim- 
inately to all Captain Marryatt's productions. It must 
be taken with exceptions ; as all criticisms must, that 
aim at nothing more than to exhibit salient characteris- 
tics. 



THOMAS NOON TALFOURD. 

*' A Serjeant of the Lawe, ware and wise, 
Tnat often hadde yben at the paruis. 
There was also, lull riche of excellence. 
Discrete he was, and of gret reverence ; 
lie seemed swiche, his wordes were so wise." — Chauceb. j 

"And give me stomach to digest this Law, 
O sacred Puesy, the queen rf souls ! 
Would men learn but to distinguish spirits. 
And set true difference 'twixt those jaded wits 
That run a broken pace to: common hire, 
And the high raptures of a happy muse ! — 

Hence, Law, and welcome. Muses ! tho'not rich 

Yet are you pleasing : let's bo reconciled I" — Ben Jonson. 

It falls to the lot of very few men to attain to emi- 
sience in many and various paths. The subject of the 
present essay, celebrated as an able, accomplished, and 
conscientious lawyer, an acute critic of independent 
judgment and generous feelings, an eloquent orator, a 
consistent legislator, and a dramatic poet, is one of 
these few who have so signalized themselves. 

Thomas Noon Talfourd is a native of Reading. His 
mother was the daughter of INIr. Thomas Noon, who 
v/as for thirty years the minister of the Independent 
congregation there. Accordingly he was instructed in 
their strict tenets, and his early education was obtained 
in their school at Mill-Hill; bin being removed to the 
public grammar school under Dr. Valpy, he there ac- 
quired a love of Shakspeare and the drama — forbidden 
ground to his native sect — and soon adopted the less 
rigid doctrines of the Church of England. At the same 
time he acquired those ardent political feelings, which, 
tempered by time, he has always since maintained. His 
poetical talent was developed equally early. In the 
year 1811, while still at school, he published a volume 
<3ntilled *' Poems on various Subjects." The subjects 
are interesting, as evincing the character of his thoughts 
at this early period. One of them, entitled '' On the 
Education of the Poor," and another, " The Union and 
BrotluM-hood of Mankind," obtained for him the ac- 
quaintance of Joseph Fox, distinguished for his zeal in 
-the cause of education, and this new friend introduced 
N 



146 SERJEANT TALFOURD. 

him by letter to Lord (then Mr. Henry Brougham). He 
was received by that distinguished individual with the 
utmost kindness, and encouraged to work his way to 
the bar through hterature. Following this judicious ad- 
vice, he engaged himself in 1813 to Mr. Chitty for a pe- 
riod of four years. 

The literary career of the j'^oung lawyer began with 
an essay published in the " Pamphleteer," early in 1813, 
entitled " An Appeal to the Protestant Dissenters of 
Great Britain on behalf of the Catholics." This essay- 
was eloquently written and breathed a spirit of liberali- 
ty, such as is rightly denominated "Christian." Tal- 
fourd was then under eighteen. '• A Critical Examina- 
tion of some objections taken by Cobbett to the Unita- 
rian Relief Bill," was a very successful attempt to grap- 
ple with a writer of such singular power. " Observa- 
tions on the Punishment of the Pillory," and "An Ap- 
peal against the Act for regulating Royal Marriages," 
look the side of humanity against barbarous custom and 
mistaken notions of national policy. 

An " Attempt to Estimate the Poetical Talent of the 
Present Age," written in 1815, is chiefly remarkable as 
testifying his high appreciation of the poetry of Words- 
worth, (at a period when such a testimony was suffi- 
cient to ensure almost universal ridicule,) and scarcely 
less so for the courage with which it denounced the 
gloomy exaggerations of Lord Byron, who was then in 
the full blaze of his popularity. Hazlitt's " Spirit of the 
Age," was not published till ten years afterwards. Mr. 
Talfourd was probably the very first who publicly de- 
clared, on critical grounds, that William Wordsworth 
was a true poet. In this declaration, as in several oth- 
ers in this " Estimate," he displayed the very uncommon 
critical faculty of discovering the truth by its own light,. 
and the almost as uncommon courage and generosity in 
telling the world — without equivocation or escape-valves 
— what he had found. 

In 1817, Talfourd started as a Special Pleader. Du- 
ring his period of study he had assisted Mr. Chitty in 
his voluminous work on the Criminal Laws. The chief 
quarters in which he carried on his literary labours, 
were now in the " Retrospective Review," and the " En- 
cyclopaedia Metropolitana." The articles on " Homer,'' 
on " Greek Tragedians," and " Greek Lyric Poets," in 
the latter, were written by him. He began his connec- 



SERJEANT TALFOUllD. 147 

tion with tlie " New Monthly" in 1820, and continued to 
furnish the dramatic criticisms, besides other papers, in 
that magazine for twelve years. He subsequently 
wrote in the " Edinburgh Review" and " London Magu- 
zine," and published in 1826 a Memoir of Mrs. Radcliffe, 
prefixed to her posthumous work of " Gaston de Blonde- 
ville." About the same tin)e he brought out an edi- 
tion of " Dickenson's Guide to the Quarter Sessions," a 
labour for which the puzzled brains of country squires 
best know how to feel grateful to him. 

Mr. Talfourd was called to the bar by the Society of 
the Middle Temple in 1821, and joined the Oxford Cir- 
cuit and Berkshire Sessions. In 1822 he married Rachel, 
daughter of John Powell Rutt, Esq., a name well known 
to political reformers. 

The gradual extension of his professional engage- 
ments through the circuit, induced him to retire from 
the sessions at the expiration of twelve years, when he 
was called to the degree of Serjeant — the very same 
year in which he wrote his tragedy of " Ion." He now 
contines his practice almost exclusively to the circuit 
of the Common Pleas. Any exception has been on oc- 
casions when his s)'mpathies excited him to exertion. 
He undertook the defence of the " True Sun" newspa- 
per in the King's Bench, and electrified the court by his 
eloquence on that occasion. His defence of " Tait's 
Magazine" against Richmond, in the Exchequer, was 
■equally brilliant and sound of argument. 

In 1834, the electors of Reading returned their distin- 
guished tovi'nsman to Parliament by a large majority, 
composed of all parties. He was returned again in the 
General Election of 1839, but declined standing in that 
of 1841. Plis parliamentary career has been distinguish- 
ed by the same high talent, consistency of principle, 
and moral purpose, which have pervaded his life. His 
most celebrated speeches are those on moving for the 
Law of Copyright, and on bringing forward his " Cur-- 
tody of Infants" Bill. The tone and style of the forme- 
speech were, like its subject, new to the ear of the 
House ; but he was listened to with deep attention, 
while with earnest and fluent language, assisted by 
happy illustrative reference, he enforced the claims of 
the struggling professors of literature upon that proper- 
ty in the products of the brain, which the law allov.^ed 
to be wrested from them. With regard to the Custodv 



148 SERJEANT TALFOURD. 

of Infants, his attempt to obtain an alteration of tha 
statute, which in every case of separation, though the 
character of the wife was as free from spot or taint as 
that of the liusband was sullied by vice, yet releiitlessly 
tore the children from their mother, and gave them as 
his sole right to the fatlier — was advocated with inde- 
fatigable zeal, and finally with success. 

Mr. Serjeant Talfourd was an assiduous discharger 
of his parliamentary duties, when not engaged on the 
circuit; notwithstanding v.hich, he always found time 
for literature. The two tragedies which succeeded 
"Ion," were written while he was in Parliament. He 
also at that period published an edition of the " Letters 
of Lamb," with a touching and masterly sketch of the 
life of his old friend ; a delightful book to all true lovers 
of literature. 

While the leisure hours of Mr. Talfourd have been 
enriched with the society of the most distinguished lit- 
erary characters of the tune, for among his friends have 
been — the living would be too numerous to mention — 
Godwin, Hazlitt, Coleridge, Lamb, &c., he never forgot 
his old master, Dr. Valpy. Among other instances of 
friendly intercourse, which continued to the close of 
Dr. Valpy's life, he regularly attended all the meetings 
of the school, and always wrote the epilogues to the 
Greek Plays triennially performed. 

Mr. Talfourd is remarkable for having achieved an 
equally high reputation in law and in letters ; and it is. 
almost as peculiar a circumstance that he has had so 
few dissentient voices among the critics of Ids day. 
Dissentient voices of course he has had to endure, as all 
eminent men must have in their lifetime, and more or 
less afterwards; but if the worthy Serjeant has occa- 
sionally suffered, he has not had more than "his share," 
while the majority have cordially admitted his claims 
with such slight objections or differences of opinion with 
him, and with each other, as are natural to different 
minds in contemplating the same objects. The spirit of 
fairness asks and permits this amicable discussion on 
all hands, and with this feeling the following critical re- 
marks are submitted. 

If the public, with its leaders and teachers and censors 
of the present day, are cold and indifferent with regard 
to dramatic literature, or positively hosiiie when a dra- 
ma is published without having been produced on the 



SERJEANT TALFOl'RD. 149 

-Stage— it is probable that matters were still worse in this 
respect when iMr. Talfourd commenced his dramatic ca- 
reer. To complete, therefore, the peculiarity of his po- 
sition, he wrung from the public and the iiifluencers of 
its opinions — opinions which seemed to assume some 
credit to themselves for their undramatic tendencies — a 
triumph, and on the very stage, for a legitimate drama; 
and while the age had been returning, in the more promi- 
nent of its late poetry, to the Shaksperean and Elizabe- 
than standards, he stood in the doorway of the Gallic- 
Greek- Enghsh school, and took the town by surprise 
with a new "Cato" of a stronger colouring and calibre. 
We say advisedly the Gallic-Greek-English school — 
meaning the Gallic conception of the Greek drama, which 
is indeed a thing as unlike the reality, as Versailles is to 
the Parthenon ; and which Dryden helped to naturalize 
in England, when he " reformed" our versification gener- 
ally, upon the Gallic conception of rhythm. Of this 
school (not that we for a moment would hint at any ac- 
tual similarity) were Addison's "Cato,"" Johnson's "Ire- 
ne," and Holme's " Douglas :" and of this, in our later 
age, arose " Ion," vrhich is well worth all the three, tak- 
ing them on their own ground ; more exalted than " Ca- 
to," more eloquent than " Irene," and more purely tender 
than " Douglas ;" with a glow from end to end, which 
may be called the sentiment of unity, and which nobly 
distinguishes it from all. Let the same question of ori- 
gin be put to Mr. Talfourd's as to the " Ion" of Euripides, 

and it must be answered, we believe, even so. 

Of the concentration and passion of the Shaksperean 
drama, Mr. Talfourd's first dramatic production does not, 
as we have assumed, partake. The appeal of his trage- 
dy is to the conscientiousness of its audience ; and it pu- 
rines less by pity and terror, than by admiration and ex- 
altation. Its power is less an intellectual and poetical 
than a moral power; and the peculiarity of its sublime 
lies significantly in the excellence of its virtue. For, — 
avoiding any loose classification of this tragedy with the 
works of the Greek dramatists, on the specious ground 
of its containing that awful dogma of fatalism which is 
the thunder of the ^Escliylean drama ; the critic will rec- 
ognize, upon consideration, that while the design of 
■" ion" turns upon a remorseless fatahsm, the principal 
N 2 



150 SERJEANT TALFOURD. 

action turns upon Virtue completing herself within the- 
narrow bounds left by Destiny to Life. It is not only a. 
drama of fate, but of self-devoted duty. The necessity 
of woe is not stronger in it, than the necessity of hero- 
ism. The determination of the heroic free-will confronts 
in it gloriously the predestination of circumstance. And, 
strikingly and"^ contrastingly effective, there arises beside 
the VIS iricriics of the colossal Fate, and the vis certamini.s- 
of the high-hearted victim, the tender elevated purity of 
the woman Clemanihe; equal in augustness to either 
power, and crushed disconsolately between both. 

This mixture of the pure Christian principle of faith 
and love with the Greek principle of inexorable fate, pro- 
duces an incongruity in the tragedy which raises a con- 
flict in the mind. Capricious demons are left triumphant,, 
and noble humanity is sacrificed. The very same ef- 
fect is equally produced by the method and style of the 
execution. In the Greek mode of treating these sub- 
jects the sublime rather than the beautiful is aimed at ; 
the sterner and colder characters of the actors, and the 
pov^erful effect of the chorus, nerve the mind to bear 
the contemplation of humanity in the iron grasp of Fate, 
Above all, sympathy is not allowed to rest satisfied with 
the triumph of the remorseless gods, for the old Greek 
tragedians (if we except iEschylus) were most of them 
sceptical at heart. The choruses, besides their alarms, 
would have " had their doubts." 

The tragedy of" Ion" has an admirable unity of pur- 
pose and expression ; a unity apart from the "' unities,^ 
and exceeding them in critical value ; and in ilself an es- 
sential characteristic of every high work of art. The 
conception springs clear from the author's mind, and 
alights with fulness upon the readers ; the interest is un- 
interrupted throughout, and the final impression distinct. 
To the language, may be attributed appropriateness and 
eloqueivce, with some occasional redundance, and a cer- 
tain deficiency in strength : the images are rather ele- 
gant than bold or original ; and the versification flows 
gracefully and copiously within the limits of the school. 
The effect of the whole is such as would be created were 
it possible to restore the ground-plan of an Athenian 
temple in its majestic and simple proportions, and deco- 
rate it with the elegant statues of Canova. 

Mr. Talfourd's second work of "The Athenian Cap- 
tive," has much of the ruling principle, and most of the 



SERJEANT TALFOURD. 151 

features of his former tragedy, though with sufficient va- 
riety in its structure and adornments. If he appears 
somewhat haunted by the ideal virtue of his " Ion," it is 
not an ignoble bewitchment ; nor could any right priest- 
ly hand extend itself very eagerly to exorcise a "man 
of La we" of ihe nineteenth century, from the presence 
of su(;h high chivalrous shadows. It was produced un- 
der Mr. Macready's auspices, who personated the chief 
charncter very finely. The effect of the tragedy was 
very good in itself; very well received by a crowded au- 
dience ; promised to become a refining influence upon 
the stage — a stage so much needing such assistance — 
was played three or four times, and has never been act- 
ed since. The mysteries, like the stupidities, of Man- 
agement, are inscrutable. 

The tragedy of " Glencoe," — or "The Fate of the 
Macdonalds," again displayed the learned author's ten- 
dency to revert to the old classical tyranny of fate. But 
still greater varieties were introduced in the present in- 
stance than in the production last named. And not. 
merely in the scenery and costume ; nor in the wish to 
v/rite for a favourite actor — though the "Advertise- 
ment to the Second Edition" would lead us fully to ex- 
pect this. 

"It was composed in the last vacatioa at Glandwr, in the most beautiful 
part of North Wales, chiefly for the purpose of embodying- the feelings which. 
the grandest scenery in the Highlands of Scotland had awakened, when I vis- 
ited them in the preceding autumn. I hud no distinct inteatioa at that time 
of seeking for it a trial on the stage ; but having almost unconsciously blend- 
ed with the image of the hero, the figure, the attitudes, and the tones of the 
great actor whom I had associated for many years with every form of tragedy, 
I could not altogether repress the hope that I might one day enjoy the delight, 
&c. &c. The Play was printed, merely for the purpose of being presented to 
my friends ; but when only two or three copies had beenpresenl;ed, I was en- 
couraged to believe that it would one day be acted," <tc. &c. 

Passing over such objections as might be made to a 
" tragedy" being written chiefly for the purpose of de- 
scribing the emotions induced by any local scenery — 
what a development is contained, in the last two sen- 
tences, of the condition of dramatic aff'airs in this coun- 
try ! — of the all-powerful position of a manager or prin- 
cipal actor, and of the humiliating position of the dra- 
.matic poet. Here we see one of the most able and em.- 
inent men of the time humbly relating how he was 
" encouraged to believe that his play would one day be 
acted !' Instead of Mr. Talfourd being in a position to 
command the representation of any production, it turns 
out that he is exactly in the position of all other dram- 



152 SERJEANT TALFOURD. 

atists— acted or unacted. Yet people wonder at the 
poverty of the modern acted drama, and of the dearth of 
any new pieces of the higher class. If Mr. Talfourd, 
with his third tragedy, felt himself surrounded and op- 
pressed with all these doubts and difficulties, what won- 
der that nearly all other dramatists should have had no 
chance. The accusations of partiality or favoritism in 
the selection of the productions of particular men — ex- 
cept in the single instance of Sir E. L. BuUver — are 
comparatively unfounded. The expenses now thought 
necessary to incur in the production of a new five-act 
piece upon the stage, are so heavy, that very few new 
pieces can be produced in a season ; so that the general 
system is a tolerably impartial and sweeping rejection, 
for which it is foolishly thought requisite by manage- 
ments to oifer some other reasons, critical or prevari- 
cating. 

But in this tragedy of " Glencoe," there is not only 
the charm of descriptive poetry, there is also the poetry 
of feeling, and of deep unaffected sentiment. It has 
nothing in common with that mawkish sentimentality 
and affectation of something profound, either in thought 
or feeling, which are discoverable in too many produc- 
tions of our day. In " Glencoe" there is developed 
clearly, and truly, that anguish which overcomes a noble 
mind, when its affections, having been drawn out under 
the half-guilty, half-innocent guise of female friendship, 
till the devotion became entire and absorbing the whole 
being — are put aside and evaded by the fair friend on the 
score of nothing more than friendship having been un- 
derstood. An anguish in which the future life of the 
iover has become a drifting wreck; and that of the 
thoughtless deceiver generally a sacrifice to some un- 
genial and selfish alliance. The tragedy ends rather 
poorly in comparison with the expectations raised by 
the emotions previously excited; but that one striking 
phase in the history of human hearts, is, however, em- 
bodied in " Glencoe," and with a force, which the deli- 
cacy and refinement of the language sometimes renders 
less apparent to the ear than to the sensibility, but 
which is derived from its inherent truth, and clearness 
of development. 

It may be said of Mr. Talfourd, as a general estimate 
of his character, abilities, and aim in lif^e,that his whole 
career has been equally distinguished by high moral 



SERJEANT TALFOURD. 153 

purpose, and by ihe most unquestionable talents. It 
does not fall within the scope of this work to enter into 
any examination of Mr. Talfourd's legal abilities; we 
must, therefore, content ourselves with observing, that 
the marked anxiety of professional men to obtain his 
services can only be the result of an experience of the 
most advantageous results. 



R. M. MILNES AND H. COLERIDGE. 

" Oh, Sir I pray is this gold ? — and this ? — aud this ? 

Doth it sound ?— 

Melodiously — a golden tune." — Shirley's Arcadia. 

The poetry of Richard Monckton Milnes lias met 
with considerable praise in many quarters, yet hardly 
as much as it deserves; and it has met vvith peculiar 
dispraise, more than it deserves, either in kind or de- 
gree. A common case enough. Of the poetry of Hart- 
ley Coleridge — as of Charles Tennyson, and Thomas 
Wade — we may say, without fear of contradiction, that, 
like many other good things, it is not at all known to 
the public. 

Mr. Milnes has been accused of a want of the divine 
fire of imagination and passion ; and he has, moreover, 
been accused of merely thinking that he thinks, or of imi- 
tating the tone and current of other men's minds, and mis- 
taking that for the original impulse and production of his 
own. Not any of these broad accusations are justifiable, 
and in some respects they are demonstrably unfounded. 

Mr. Milnes does not appear to possess the least dra- 
matic passion, nor does he display much impulse or en- 
ergy in his poetry. There is no momentum in the 
progress of his lines; and the want is conspicuously 
betrayed in his blank verse, because, of all other forms, 
that is the one which absolutely requires the most gen- 
uine, thought-sustained, and unflagging energies. We 
are almost tempted to hazard the opinion that fine blank 
verse requires great material stamina; in fact, a power- 
ful internal physique, to carry on the burthen and pur- 
pose of the soul. We think that the psychological 
history of nearly every one of our great poets who wrote 
in blank verse, will bear us out in the opinion. Several 
exceptions are undoubtedly against this ; and the great- 
est of them would be Keats; yet here the exception 
would tend to prove the rule, as he died soon after the 
production of his only poem in blank verse, which is, 
moreover, unfinished. How far this latter speculation — 
which, indeed, may be of no sound value — would be ap- 
plicable or inapplicable to the poet at present under dis- 



R. M. MILNES AND H. COLERIDGE. 155^ 

cussion, need not be considered, because he seldom, 
writes in blank verse ; he is essentially a lyrical poet ; 
but to his occasionally attempting the former may be 
attributed some of the accusations of want of passion 
and impulsive energies. 

But the most ostensible is not always the most forci- 
ble ; there is latent fire as well as palpable combustion ; 
and the eflfect of genuine elements, though always pro- 
portionate to its cause, must seem inadequate, in all 
cases of very refined or quiet development, except to 
those who are prepared with a ready sympathy, and can 
recognize the deepest source from the least murmuring: 
that rises up to the surface. A poet should be judged 
by the class to which he belongs, and by the degree of 
success he attains in his own favourite aim. Mr. Milnes,. 
regarding poetry as "the gods' most choicest dower," 
says of it, in his " Leucas," — 

•' Poesy, which in chaste repose abides, 
As in its atmosphere ; that placid flower 
Thou hast exposed to passion's fiery tides," &c. 

Here, at once, we discover Mr. Milnes' theory, and 
the chief aim of his muse. Sappho is blamed for steep- 
ing her verse in " passion's fiery tides," because poesy 
is said to abide " in chaste repose," as its proper atmo- 
sphere. By this standard, then, is the poetry of Rich- 
ard Monckton Milnes to be measured ; it is a standard' 
of inherent beauty; and he will be found to attain it 
most completely. A short extract from one of the ear- 
liest poems in his collection, published ten years ago,, 
■will suffice to illustrate this. 

" But when in clearer unison 

That marvellous concord still went on ; 
And gently as a blossom grows 
g A frame of syllables uprose ; 

With a delight akin to fear 

My heart beat fast and strong, to hear 
Two munnurs beautifully blent. 

As of a voice and instrument, 
A hand laid lig^htly on low chords, 

A voice that sobbed between its words. 
' Stranger I the voice that trembles in your ear 

You would have placed had you been fancv-free 
First in the chorus of the happy sphere, 

The home of deified mortality. 

***** 

Stranger, the voice is Sappho's — weep ; oh ! weep. 

That the soft tears of sympathy may fall 
Into this prison of the sunless deep, 

Where I am laid in miserable thrall.' "*— iewca*. 

* MemoriaJs of a Tour in Greece, by R. M. Milnes. 1834. 



156 RICHARD MONCKTON MILNES 

It is as a lyric and elegiac poet (in the ancient sense 
of elegy) with a temperament rather elegiac than lyric, 
that Mr. Monckton M lines takes his place among the 
distinguished writers of his age and country. Notwith- 
standing that he has written "■ Poetry for the People," 
neither in the work in question nor in any other, has he 
given evidence of a genius calculated for popular ap- 
peals. He might have called his work '• Poetry for the 
Philosopliers ;"" but the very philosophers shoidd be of 
the upper House and accustomed to tread softly upon 
Plato's carpets, or they would be found inevitably de- 
fective, now and then, in their range of sympathies. For 
Mr. Milnes is an aristocrat in literature and modes of 
thought; though we are far from meaning lo insinuate 
that he merely " writes like a gentleman ;" his mind 
and heart are too strong in the "humanities." But the 
impulses of mind and heart, although abundantly human 
and true, are surrounded by so definite a circle of intel- 
lectual habit, that they cannot, or, at least, do not cast 
themselves beyond it ; and they remain coloured by the 
mode. He thinks the truth out boldly, and feels gen- 
erously the use of speaking it; but the medium of 
expression between him and the public, is somewhat 
<?onventionally philosophical in its character, and too 
fine and recondite in its peculiarities, to be appreciated 
by the people popularly so called. 

The poetical prodisciions of Hartley Coleridge are 
also exclusively lyrical and elegiac. He is one of the 
many instances of the disadvantage of having an emi- 
nent father. It was almost impossible for the son of 
such a man not to be influenced by his father's genius 
to a degree that is destructive of originality. With 
strong feeling, a bright fancy, and a facility of versifica- 
tion, there is yet a certain hard resemblance in the 
poems of the son to the poems of the father, which may 
perhaps be termed an unconscious mechanism of the 
faculties, acting under the associations of love. His de- 
signs want invention, and his rhapsodies abandonment. 
His wildness does not look quite spontaneous, btit as if 
it blindly followed something erratic. '!'he mirth seems 
rather forced ; but the love and the melancholy are his 
own. Hartley Coleridge has a sterling vein of thought 
in him, without a habit and order of thought. It is ex- 
tremely probable that he keeps his best things to him- 
self. His father talked his best thoughts, so that some' 



AND HARTLEY COLERIDGE. 157 

body had the benefit of them ; his son for the most part 
keeps his for liis own bosom. 

We are averse to notice a man's politics in speaking 
ofhis poetry, but Mr. Hartley Coleridge forces his spleen 
disagreeably upon the attention, especially in his " Leon- 
ard y]id Susan." 

But if the lovers of poetry have done wrong to suffer 
the verses of Hartley Coleridge to sink into the mass of 
forgotten publications, iiis a far stronger ground of com- 
plaint that the poems of Thomas Wade — author of 
"Mundi et Cordis Carmin>i," "Helena," and " Protha- 
nasia," &(;., should not have fared very much better in 
respect of popularity. The first of these works contains 
many echoes of other poets, the consequence of studies 
in a "loving spirit," but the echoes are true to their ori- 
gin, and in the finest spirit. In m.ost cases, the thoughts 
and images are his own, derived from his own imagina- 
tion, and from the depths of his being. This is nK^re es- 
pecially the case with " Prothanasia," which is founded 
upon a passage in the correspondence of Bettine Bren- 
tano with Goethe, and is well worthy of its foundation. 
A few lines of uivocation will display the fervid tone of 
this poem : — 

" Beiiutiful River ! could I flow like thee, 
Year after year, thro' tliis deliciousness 
Ever-renewing ; and retain no iTiore 
Of human thought and passion than might yield 
A loving conscio'isness of grace and joy ; 
I could content niP to endure, till Time 
Had heap'd such inillion'd years upon his record, 
As almost in himself to seem and be 
The sole Eternity I — O, trees and flowers ; 
.Toy-throated i.>irds ; and ye, soft airs and hues, 
That nestle in you skiey radiance I 
Happy ye are, as beauteous : to your life, 
Unrealised, unrealisable. 
Intolerable, infinite desire 
Approacheth never ; and ye live and die, 
Yournatni-es all-fulfilling and fultill'd, 
Self-satiate and perfected." 

It is impossible to believe that such a poem should 
not some day find its just appreciation in the public 
mind. And it is the least of the merits of this author's 
productions that they display a care and classical finish 
from which many well-known writers might derive a 
verv sahitary lesson. 

The following is one of Mr. Wade's sonnets, the pro- 
phetic spirit of which is its own sufficient comment. It 
is entitled " A Prophecy." 
O 



158 RICHARD MONCKTON MILNES 

" There is a mighty dawning on the earth, 
Of human glory : dreams unknown before 
Fill the mind's boundless world, and wondrous birth 
Is given tog:reat thought: the deeji-drawnlore, 
But late a hidden fount, at which a few 
Quaff'd and were glad, is now a flowing river, 
Which the pnrch'd nations may approach and view, 
Kneel down and driuk, or float in it for ever : 
The bonds of Spirit are asunder broken, 
And Matter makes a very sport of distance ; 
On every side appears a silent token 
Of what will be hereafter, when Existence 
Shall even become a pure and equal thing. 
And earth sweep high as heaven, on solemn wing." 

And this, also by the same author, is a striking proof 
of intellectual subtlety : — 

" God will'd Creation ; but Creation was not 
The cause of that Almighty Will of God, 
But that great God's desire of emanation : 
Beauty of Human Love the object is ; 
But Love's sweet cause lives in the Soul's desire 
For intellectual, sensual sympathies: 
Seeing a plain-plumed bird, in whose deep throat 
We know the richest power of music dwells, 
We long to hear its linked melodies ; 
Scenting a far-off flower's most sweet perfume, 
That gives its balm of life to every wind, 
We crave to mark the beauty of its bloom : 
But bird nor flower is that Volition's cause ; 
But Music and fine Grace, graven on the Soul, like laws." 

It may be said that there is such a thing as an author's 
voluntary abandonment of the field ; and that this is pecu- 
liarly the case with regard to Hartley Coleridge, and to 
Charles Tennyson. Perhaps so ; still it is not a poet's 
business to be his own bellman. Be this as it may, 
there is something peculiarly touching in the withdraw- 
al of Charles Tennyson from the pathway to the temple 
of Poesy, as though he would prefer to see his brother's 
name enshrined with an undivided fame. One little 
volume of sweet and unpretending poetry comprises all 
we know of him. It has long been out of print. His 
feeling of the " use and service" of poetry in the world 
may be comprised in a few lines, which may also be re- 
garded as the best comment upon his own ; — 

We must have music while we languish here, 

To make the Soul with pleasant fancies rife 

And soothe the stranger from another sphere. 

Sonnet xv. 

But perhaps we had better give one of Charles Ten- 
nyson's sonnets entire : — 

" I trust thee from my soul, O Mary dear, 
But, ofttimes when delight has fullest power, 
Hope treads too lightly for herself to hear, 
And doubt is ever by until the hour : 



AND HARTLEY COLERIDGE. 159 

I trust thee, Mary, but till thou art mine 

Up from thy foot unto thy golden hair, 

O let me still niisg-ive thee and repine, 

Uncommon doubts spring up with blessings i-are ! 

Thine eyes of purest love give surest sign, 

Drooping with fondness, and thy blushes tell 

A flitting tale of steadiest faith and zeal ; 

Yet I will doubt — to make success divine I 

A tide of summer dreams with gentlest swell 

Will bear upon me then, and I shall love most well I" 

Sonnet xxiii. 

Mr. Milnes's earlier poems are more individual in ex- 
pression and ideal in their general tone, and probably 
contain more essential poetry and more varied evidence 
of their author's gifts, than the writings which it has 
since pleased him to vouchsafe to the public. He has 
since divested himself of tlie peculiarities which offend- 
ed some critics, and has more studiously incarnated 
himself to the perception of readers not poetical. The 
general character of his genius is gentle and musing. 
The shadow of an academical tree, if not of a temple- 
column, seems to lie across his brows, which are bland 
and cheerful none the less. He has too much real sen- 
sibility, too much active sympathy with the perpetual 
workings of nature and humanity, to have any morbid 
moaning sentimentality. Beauty he sees always ; but 
moral and spiritual beauty, the light kernelled in the 
light, he sees supremely. Never will you hear him ask, 
in the words of a great contemporary poet, 

" And is there any moral shut 
Within the bosom of a rose V 

because while he would eschew with that contemporary 
the vulgar utilitarianism of moral drawing, he would 
perceive as distinctly as the rose itself, and perhaps 
more distinctly, the spiritual significance of its beauty. 
His philosophy looks upward as well as looks round — 
looks upward because it looks round: it is essentially 
and specifically Christian. His poetry is even ecclesi- 
astical sometimes ; and the author of " One Tract More," 
and his tendency towards a decorative religion, are to 
be recognized in the haste with which he lights a taper 
before a picture, or bends beneath a " Papal Benedic- 
tion." For the rest, he is a very astringent Protestant 
in his love for ratiocination — and he occasionally draws 
out his reasons into a fine line of metaphysics. He sits 
among the muses, making reasons; and when Apollo 
plucks him by the ear to incite him to some more purely 



160 EICHARD MONCKTON MII.NES 

poetic work, — then he sings them. With every suscep- 
tibility of sense and fHncy, and full of appreciations of 
art, he would often write pictorially if he did not nearly 
always write analytically. Moreover, he makes senti- 
ments as well as reasons; and whatever may be the no- 
bility of sentiment or thought, the words are sure to be 
worthy of it. He has used metres in nearly every kind of 
combination, and with results almost uniformly, if not oft- 
en exquisitely, harmonious and expressive. There may 
be a slight want of suppleness and softness in his lighter 
rhythms, and his blank verse appears to us defective in 
intonation and variety, besides such deficiencies as we 
have previously suggested ; but the intermediate forms 
of composition abundantly satisfy the ear. With all 
this, he is quite undramatic; and in matters of charac- 
ter and story, has scarcely ever gone the length, and 
that never very successfully, even of the ordinary bal- 
lad writer. His poems, for the most part, are what is 
called " occasional,"— their motive — impulse arising 
from without. He perceives and responds, rather than 
creates. Yet he must have the woof of his own per- 
sonality to weave upon. With the originality which 
every man possesses who has strength enough to be 
true to his individuality, his genius has rather the air of 
reflection than of inspiration ; his muse is a Pythia com- 
petent to wipe the foam from her lips — if there be any 
foam. Thoughtful and self-possessed instead of fervent 
and impulsive, he is tender instead of passionate. And 
when he rises above his ordinary level of philosophy 
and tenderness, it is into a still air of rapture instead of 
into exulting tumults and fervours. Even his love 
poems, for which he has been crowned by the critics 
M'ith such poor myrtle as they could gather, present a 
serene transfiguring of life instead of any quickening 
of the currents of life: the poet's heart never beats so 
tumultuously as to suspend his observation of the beat- 
ing of it — 

" And the beating of my own heart 
Was all the sound I heard." 

The general estimate of him, in brief, is a thinking, 
feeling man, worshipping and loving as a man should — 
gifted naturally, and refined socially; and singing the 
songs of his own soul and heart, in a clear, sweet seren- 
ity, which does not want depth, none the less faithfully 
and nobly, that he looks occasionally from the harp- 



AND HARTLEY COLERIDGE. 161 

Strings to tlie music-book. His "Lay of the Humble," 
*' Long Ago," and other names of melodies, strike upon 
the memory as softly and deeply as a note of the melo- 
dies themselves — while (apart from these lyrics) he has 
written some of the fullest and finest sonnets, not mere- 
ly of our age, but of our literature. 

'I'he three other poets mentioned in this paper have 
each written very fine sonnets. Those of Charles Ten- 
nyson are extremely simple and unaffected; the sponta- 
neous offspring of the feelings and the fancy — those of 
Thomas Wade are chiefly of the intellect; high- wrought, 
recondite, refined, classical, and often of sterling thought, 
with an upward and onward eye : those of Hartley Cole- 
ridge are reflective; the emanations of a sad heart, aim- 
less, of little hope, and resigned, seeming to proceed from 
one who has suffered the best of his life to slip away 
from him unused. Sonnet IX. pathetically expresses 
this. 

" Long time a child, and still a child, when years 
Had painted manhood on my cheek, was I ; 
For yet I lived like one not born to die ; 
A thriftless prodig-al of smiles and tears, 
No hope I needed, and 1 knew no fears. 
But sleep, though sweet, is only sleep, and waking, 
I waked to sleep no more, at once o'ertaking 
The vanguard of my age, with all arrears 
Of duty on my back. Nor child, nor man, 
Nor youth, nor sage, I find my head is grey, 
For I have lost the race I never ran, 
A rathe December blights my lagging May ; 
And still I am a child, tho' I be old, 
Time is my debtor for my years untold." 

The prose writings of Hartley Coleridge — particular- 
ly his " Yorkshire Worthies," and his Introduction to 
" Massinger and Ford," — are all of first-rate excellence. 
It is much to be regretted they are not more numerous. 
O 2 



REV. S. SMITH, A. FONBLANaUE, 



DOUGLAS JERROLD. 

" Hard words that have been 
So nimble, and so full of subtle flame, 
As if that every one from whom they came 
Had meant to put his whole wit in a jest."— Beaumont. 

" His fine wit 
Makes such a wound, the knife is lost in it."— Shelley. 

" I shall talk nothing but crackers and fire-works to-night." — Ben Jonsom. 

" Hold out, ye guiltie and ye galled hides. 
And meet my far-fetched stripes with waiting sides." — Hall's Satires. 

The present age is destined for the first time in the 
history of literature and of the human mind, to display- 
Wit systematically and habitually employed by the 
great majority of its possessors in the endeavour to pro- 
mote the public good. While great satirists like Juve- 
nal and Horace have been " on virtue's side," they shone 
all the more for being exceptions to the fraternity. Not 
only the vices, the follies, the vanities, the weaknesses 
of our fellow-creatures, have furnished the best subjects- 
for the shafts of wit : but little self-denial was practi- 
sed with reference to the nobler feelings and actions of 
humanity. To take a flight directly to modern times, 
let us alight at once upon the days of Charles the Sec- 
ond, when the laugh was raised indiscriminately at vice 
or virtue, honesty or knavery, wisdom or folly. What- 
ever faults such great writers as Swift and Butler, or 
Moliere and Voltaire, may sometimes have committed 
in directing their ridicule amiss, their intentions, a 
least, were reformatory, and therefore their errors aie 
not to be compared with the licentious poison whic 
spurted glistening from the pens of Wycherly, Farqu 
har, Congreve, and Vanbrugh, who had no noble aim Oa- 
object, or good intention, whether sound or self-delu- 
ding — but whose vicious instinct almost invariably 
prompted them to render heartless vice and wanton dis- 
honesty, as attractive and successful as possible, and 
make every sincere and valuable quahty seem dull or 



REV. S. SMITH, A. FONBLANaUE, AND D. JERROLD. 163" 

ridiculous. All the great writers of Fables — writers 
who are among the best instructors, and noblest bene- 
factors of their species — have been humorists rather 
than wits, and do not properly come into the question. 

Up to the present period, the marked distinction be- 
tween humour and wit has been that the former evin- 
ced a pleasurable sympathy; the latter, a cutting deris- 
ion. Humour laughed with humanity ; wit at all things. 
But now, for the first time, as a habit and a principle, 
do all the established wits, and the best rising wits, 
walk arm-in-arm in the common recognition of a moral 
aim. The very banding together of a number of genu- 
ine and joyous wits in the " London Charivari," instead 
of all being at •' daggers drawn" with each other in the 
old way, is in itself a perfectly novel event in the histo- 
ry of letters ; and w-hen this fact is taken in conjunction 
with the unquestionable good feeling and service in the 
cause of justice and benevolence displayed by its wri- 
ters, the permanent existence and extensive success of 
such a periodical is one of the most striking and encour- 
aging features of the age. 

The strongest instances of the commencement of 
this change are to be found in the writings of Hazlitt, 
Charles Lamb, and Leigh Hunt. No man has left such 
a number of axiomatic sayings, at once brilliant and 
true, as Hazlitt. That they are mixed up with many 
things equally brilliant, and onl)^ half-true, or, perhaps, 
not true at all, is not the question : he always meant 
them for honest truths, and invariably had a definite 
moral purpose in view. Perhaps in the works of Charles 
Lamb, and the prose writings of Leigh Hunt, wit and 
humour may be said to unite, and for the production of 
a moral eff"ect. An anxiety to advance the truth and 
promote the happiness, the right feeling, the knowledge, 
and the welfare of mankind, is conspicuous in all the 
principal essays of these three authors. That the same 
thing should ever come to be said of wits in general, 
shows that the good feeling of mankind has at length 
enlisted on its side those brilhant " shots" who had pre- 
viously refused all union or co-operation, and who, hav- 
ing been equally unsparing of friend or foe, rendered 
every noble action liable to be made ridiculous, and 
therefore, to a certain extent, impeded both private and 
public improvement and elevation of character. It 
should here be observed that the office of the poetical 



164 REV. SYDNEY SMITH, ALBANY FONBLANaUE, 

Satirist appears to have died out, not because there are 
no such men (as the world always says when no " such" 
2nan appears), but because there is no demand for him. 

The three writers, each of Avhose names possesses a 
peculiar lustre of its own, have a lively sense of the 
humorous, but are not in themselves great as humorists. 
Mr. Jerrold is the only one of the three who exercises 
tiny of the latter faculty in a consecutive and character- 
izing form, and even with him it is apt to ramble wide- 
ly, and continually emerges in caustic or sparkhng di- 
alogue and repartee, which are his forte. 

The Reverend Sydney Smith gives a laconic account 
of the commencement of his own career in the Preface 
to his published works, and as his own words usually 
" defy competition," the best plan will be to let him 
speak for hunself. 

" When first I went into the Church," says he, " I had a curacy in the 
middle of Salisbury Plain. The Squire of the parish took a fancy to me, and 
requested me to go with his son to reside at the University of Weimar ; before 
we could get there, Germany became the seat of war, and in stress of politics 
■^ve put into Edinburgh, where I remained five years. The principles of the 
French Revolution were then fully afloat, and it is impossible to conceive a 
more violent and agitated state of society. Amonsr the first persons with 
whom I became acquainted were. Lord Jetfrey, Lord Murray (late Lord Ad- 
vocate for Scotland,) and Lord Brougham ; all of them maintaining opinions 
wpon political subjects a little too liberal for the dynasty of Dundas, then ex- 
ercising a supreme power over the northern division of the island. 

" One day we happened to meet in the eighth or ninth story or flat in Buc- 
•clfiugh-place. the elevated residence of the then Mr. Jeffrey. I proposed that 
■we should set up a Review ; this was acceded to with acclamation. 1 was 
appointed Editor, and remained long enough in Edinburgh to edit the first. 
jiumber of the Edinburgh Review. The motto I proposed for the Review wa*, 
' Tenui mnsam meditamur avena.^ 
' We cultivate literature upon a little oatmeal.' 
But this was too near the truth to be admitted, and so we took our present 
grave motto from Publius Si/i-vs, of whom none of us had, I am sure, ever read a 
Single line ; and so began what has since turned out to be a very important and. 
able journal. When I left Edinburgh, it fell into the stronger hands of Lord 
Jeffrey and Lord Brougham, and reached the highest point of popularity and 
success. " 

After giving various good reasons for a high appre- 
ciation of the " Edinburgh Review" at the time it start- 
ed, Sydney Smith says — 

" I see very little in my Reviews to alter or repent of: I always endeavour- 
ed to fight against evil ; and what I thought evil then, I think evil now. I 
am heartily glad that all our disqualifying laws for religious opinions are abol- 
ished, and I see nothing in such measures but unmixed good and real increase 
.of strength to our Establishment." 

The few words witli which he introduces the celebra- 
ted " Letters of Peter Plymley" (which were so very 
instrumental in assisting the Catholic emancipation by 



AND DOUGLAS JERROLD. 165- 

extreme ridicule of all needless alarms upon the occa- 
sion) are inimitable : — 

" Soir.ohow or another, it came to be conjectured tliat I was the author : / 
have always dented it ; but Jinding that J deny it in vain, I have thought it 
tmvht be as loell io include the Letters in this Collection : they had an im- 
iQCLse cifculation at the time, atid 1 thiuk above 20,000 copies were sold." 

As displaj'ing the political and social opinions of Syd- 
ney Smith, the following may suffice : — 

*' It is always considered as a piece of impertinence in England, if a man 
of less than two or three thousand a year has any opinions at all upon impf)r- 
tant subjects ; and, in addition, he was sure at that time to be assailed with 
all the Billingsgate of the French Revolution — Jacobin, Leveller, Atheist, 
Deist, Socinian, Incendiary, Regicide, were the gentlest appellations used ; 
and the man who breathed a syllable against the senseless bigotry of the two 
Georges, or hinted at the abominable tyranny and persecution exercised upoa 
Catholic Ireland, was shunned as unfit for the relations of social life. Not a 
murmur against any a.buse was permitted ; to say a word against the suitor- 
cide delays of the Court of Chancery, or the cruel punishments of the Game 
Laws, or against any abuse which a rich man inflicted or a poor man suffer- 
ed, was treason against the Plousiocracy, and was bitterly and steadily re- 
sented." 

" We believe," says the ' Times,' in a notice of the 
works of Sydney Smith, " that the concession of full 
defence to prisoners by counsel, is a boon for which hu- 
manity is in great measure indebted to the effect pro- 
duced upon the public mind by his vigorous article in 
the ' Edinburgh Review,' for December, 1828." Previ- 
ous to this a man might be hanged before he had been 
half heard. 

Something remains to be added to this : Sydney Smith, 
is opposed to the Ballot, and the Penny Postage, and 
is in favour of capital punishment — apparently prefer- 
ring retribution to reformation. His feelings are al- 
ways generous and sincere, whatever may be thought 
of his judgment in certain things, and his Sermons are 
replete with pure doctrine, toleration, and liberality of 
sentiment. The Irish Catholics ought to erect a mon- 
ument to him, with his statue on the top — looking very 
grave, but with the hands " holding both his sides," and 
the tablets at the base covered with bas-relief selected 
from the graphic pages of Peter Plymley. 

Although wit is the great predominating characteris- 
tic of the writings of Sydney Smith, the finest and most 
original humour is not unfrequently displayed. Under 
this latter head may be classed his review in the " Ed- 
inburgh" of Dr. Langford's " Anniversary Sermon of 
the Royal Humane Society." The review is so lacon- 
ic that v/e give it entire. 



166 REV. SYDNEY SMITH, ALBANY FONBLANaUE, 

" An accident, T\-hicli liappened to the gentleman engag^ed in rsvicwin? 
this Sermon, proves, in the most striking- niaaner, the importance of this 
•charity for restoring to life persons in whom the vital power is suspended. 
He was discovered with Dr. Langlord's discourse lying open before him in a 
-State of the most profound sleep ; from which he could not, by nny means, be 
awakened for a great length of time. By attending, however, to the rules 
prescribed by the Humane Society, flinging in the smoke of tobacco, apply- 
ing hot flannels, and carefully remocing the discourse itself to a great distance, 
the critic was restored to his disconsolate brothers. 

•' The only account he could give of himself was, that he remembers read- 
ing on, regularly, till he came to the following pathetic description of c 
'drowned tradesman ; beyond which he recollects nothing."* 

This is the whole of the review, for the quotation 
follows, so tumid, and drawling, and affected, and com- 
mon-place, that we forbear to give it, lest the same ac- 
•cident recorded by the critic should occur to the pres- 
ent reader. The " Letters to Archdeacon Singleton'' 
are excellent ; and display both wit and humour as well 
as reason. One of the happiest " turns" among many, 
is that which he gives to the threat that if clergymen 
agitate any questions affecting the patronage of the bish- 
ops, the democratic Philistines will come down upon 
the inferior clergy and sweep them all away together. 
^' Be it so," says Sydney Smith; "I am quite ready to 
foe swept away when the time comes. Everybody has 
his favourite death ; some delight in apoplexy, and oth- 
•ers prefer miasmus. I w^ould iniinitely rather be crush- 
ed by democrats, than, under the plea of the public 
good, be mildly and blandly absorbed by bishops."! The 
illustrative anecdote which follow^s this, is inimitable, 
•but we cannot afford space for it. 

Albany Fonblanque w^as intended for the bar, and be- 
came a student of the Middle Temple. He w^as a pupil 
of Chitty, the special pleader, and from his acuteness 
and promptitude in seizing upon certain prominent fea- 
tures of a case, great expectations were no doubt en- 
tertained of the brightness of his future career in the 
law. But meantime he had made the discovery that he 
could write on current topics of interest, and his fellow- 
students also discovered that what he wrote was a keen 
hit — " a palpable hit." He soon proceeded to politics. 
Castle reagh's " Six Acts" made a political writer of 
him. Totally neglecting the " declarations" and '• pleas" 
himself, and the cause of neglect if not also of " wit" in 
others, Albany Fonblanque incited the students in Mr. 
Chitty's office to the discussion of the questions of the 

* Works of the Rev. Sydney Smith. Second edition, vol. i., p. 25. 
t First Letter to Archdeacon Smgleton. Works, vol. iii., p. 195. 



AND DOUGLASS JERROLD. 167 

day, greatly to the delight and satisfaction of all par- 
ties, till a brother pupil occasionally exclaiming in his 
gleeful edification, " What a pity it is that some one 
does not say that in print /" the idea of actually trying 
it occurred to the mind of Fonblanque. He wrote " an 
article," — it produced an immediate " sensation," — and 
discovering, at the same moment, how ver}^ much he 
disliked the law, and how very much he should prefer 
literature and sharp-shooting, he hurried away from Mr. 
Chitty's dusky office, and threw himself into the bright- 
est current of tlie many-branching many-mouthed peri- 
odical press. 

But the study of the law from which Fonblanque had 
so gladly emancipated his mind had still been of great 
value to the subsequent management oi his powers. It 
served to check the natural excesses of a vivid fancy, 
and to render him searching, acute, logical, and clear- 
headed amidst contradictory or confusing statements 
and reasonings. Those who have read any of Sydney 
Smith's lucubrations in favour of the punishment of 
death should read Albany Fonblanque's articles, enti- 
tled " Capital Punishment,"* and " Justice and Mercy."! 
A brief extract will serve to show the tone adopted in 
the former, in which, let us observe, what a fine head 
and heart had Sir William Meredith, and do him hon- 
our who fifty years ago in the very " thick" of all the^ 
hanging, considered so right and necessary by every- 
body else, uplifted his voice against its vindictive inutil- 
ity. Lord Brougham thinks — that is, in 1831, he thought 
— diflferently. 

'• ' Evpii in crimes which are seldom or never pardoned,' observed Sir Will- 
iam Meredith, half a century a^o, ' death is no prevention. Housebreakers, 
forgers, and coiners, are sure to be hanged : yet housebreaking, forgery, and 
coining are the very crimes which are oftenest committed. Strange it is, that 
in the case of blood, of which we ought to be most tender, we should still go- 
on against reason, and against experience, to make unavailing slaughter of 
our fellow-creatures.' 

" ' We foresee,' observes Fonblanque, ' that Lord Brougham and Vaux will be 
a prodigious favourite with the Church. His ob.servation ' that there was 
nothing in the Bible prohibitory of the punishment of death for other crime* 
than murder,' reminds us of the reason which the Nev/gate Ordinary, in 
Jonathan Wild, gives for his choice of punch, that it is a liquor nowhere 
spoken ill of in Scripture. 

" The common phrase, the severity of punishment, is inaccurate and mis- 
leading. Of our punishments no one quality can be predicated. They vary 
with humour and circumstance. Sometimes thej'^ are sanguinary, sometimes 
gentle ; now it is called justice, anon, mercy. If intention were to be infer- 

* England under Seven Administrations," vol. ii., p. 15&, 
1 Ibid. Vol. i,, p. 194. 



168 REV. SYDNEY SMITH, ALBANY FONBLANaUE, 

red from effect, it would be supposed that the policy of the law had been to 
improve crime by a sort of gymnastic exercise. When extraordinary activity 
is observed in any limb of crime, the law immediately corrects the partiality 
by a smart application of the rod ; the ingenuity of the rogues then takes an- 
other direction which has hitherto had repose and indulgence, the law after 
a time pursues it m that quarlor with u terrible chastisement ; a third is then 
tried, and so on. By this process all the muscles of crime are in turn exer- 
cised, and the body fehmious rendered supple, agile, and vigorous. There is 
as much fashion in what is termed justice as in bonnets or sleeves. The 
judge's cap is indeed as capricious as the ladies'. Sometimes the trimminga 
are blood-red, sometimes the sky blue of mercy is in vogue. One assize there 
is a run of death on horse-dealers ; another, the sheep-stealers have their 
turn ; last winter arson was the capital rage ; now, death for forgery is said 
to be coming in again — ne quid nimis is the maxim. By this system it has come 
to pass that our rogues are accomplished in all branches of felony, and prac- 
tised in resources beyond the rogues of all other countries in the world; 
and our criminals may be afiirmed to be worthy o^" our Legislators."* 

Mr. Fonblanque's articles on the magistracy, and 
particularly the one in favour of stipendiary magis- 
trates, in which he opposes Sydney Smith in the " Edin- 
burgh Review," (who chiefly objected to the abuses 
which would ensue among the " rural judges,") are also 
good specimens of his style. To see edge-tools play- 
ing with each other, adds a considerable zest to the ar- 
gument. 

" It is no objection to town Judges that they are in the pay of Government, 
yet it is an inseparable one to rural Judges. The Frenchman, according to 
Joe Miller, who observed that an Englishman recovered from a fever after 
mating a red-herring, administered one to the first of his fellow-countrymen 
whom he found labouring under that disease, and having found that it killed 
him, noted in his tablet that a red-herring cures an Englishman of a fever, 
but it kills a Frenchman. So, wo must note, according to the ' Edinburgh 
Reviewer,' that pay is wholesome for Judges in town, but it is bad for 
Judges in the country. Pay in town is esteemed the very salt of place, the 
preservative of honesty which keeps the meat sweet and wholesome, and 
causes it to set the tooth of calumny and time at defiance. There is the * * * 
who holds out toughly, like a piece of old junk. What has made him such 
an everlasting ofScer ? The salt, the pay. When we want to make a good 
and competent authority, what do we do with him ? Souse him in salary ; 
pickle him well with pay. The other day, how we improved the Judges, by 
giving them another dip in the public pan I But pay, though it cures great 
Judges, corrupts small ones. Our Reviewer says so, and we must believe it. 
A Lttle pay, like a little learning, is a dangerous thing — drink deep, or touch 
not the Exchequer spring !"t 

The "reply" of the Reverend Sydney Smith to the 
foregoing, v^^ould now be well worth reading, but we are 
not aware that any appeared. 

Douglas Jerrold's father was the manager of a coun- 
try theatre. He did not, however, " take to the stage," 
owing perhaps to his inherent energies, which causing 
him to feel little interest in fanciful heroes, impelled 
him to seek his fortune amidst the actual storms and 
troubles of life. He went on board a man-of-war as a 

* " England under Seven Administrations," vol. ii., p. 158. 
t Ibid., vol. ii., p. 85. 



AND DOUGLAS JERROLD. 169 

midshipman at eleven years of age. On board of this 
same vessel was Clarkson Stanfield, a midshipman also. 
The ship was paid off in two years time from Jerrold's 
joining her ; Stanfield and he parted, and never saw each 
other again till sixteen years afterwards, when the}^ 
met on the stage of Drnry Lane theatre. It was on the 
night that Jerrold's " Rent Day" was produced. 

But to return to Jerrold's early days : his sea-life be- 
ing at an end, he found himself,' at the age of thirteen, 
with " all London" before him " where to choose" — not 
what he thought best, but what he could obtain. He 
learned printing ; and follov/ed this during three or four 
years ; he then began to right dramas for minor thea- 
tres. He met with more than what is usually consid- 
ered success at the Surrey theatre, where he was the 
first who started, or rather revived, what is now known 
as the English "domestic drama." In speaking of it 
somewhere he says — " a poor thing, but mine own." 
It was certainly greatly in advance of the gory melo- 
dramas and gross extravagances then in vogue. The 
*' Rent Day"\vas produced in 1831 or 32 : and was fol- 
lowed by " Nell Gwynne," " The Wedding Gown," 
*' The Housekeeper," &c., &c. All these were in two 
acts, according to the absurd legal compulsion with re- 
gard to minor theatres, but which he endeavoured to 
write in the spirit of five. 

Mr. Jerrold's position as a dramatist will receive at- 
tention in another portion of this work ; he is at pres- 
ent chiefly dealt with as a writer of characteristic prose 
fictions, essays, jeux d'esprits, and miscellaneous peri- 
odical papers. About the year 1836 he published " Men 
of Character," in three volumes, most of which had 
previously appeared in " Blackwood ;" and he also con- 
tributed to the " New Monthly" during two or three 
years. In 1842 appeared his "Bubbles of the Day," 
soon folio v/ed by a collection of essays, &c., entitled 
*• Cakes and Ale ;" and in 1843 " Punch's Letters to his 
Son." Mr. Jerrold has also written heaps of political 
articles, criticisms, and "leaders" without number. His 
last productions, up to the present date, are the " Story 
of a Feather," published in a series by the " Punch," 
and the " Chronicles of Clovernook," and " The Folly 
of the Sword" in the " Illuminated Magazine," which 
he edits. 

Of writings so full of force and brightness to make 
P 



170 REV. SYDNEY SMITH, ALBANY FONBLANQUE, 

themselves seen and felt, so full of thorough-going man 
]y earnestness for the truth and the right — and so iiv 
terspersed with tart sayings and bitter irony, touched 
up with quills of caustic, in attacks of all abuses, vicious- 
ness, and selfish depravity — writings so easily accessi- 
ble, so generally read, and about which there exist n<? 
disputes, and seldom any difference of opinion, it is im- 
possible to say enough without saying much more than 
the majority need, and the only safe proceeding is ob- 
viously that of saying very little. 

•' Brevity" is no more " the soul of wit" than a short 
stick is the essence of comedy ; it must not, therefore, 
be fancied that in uttering only the fewest words about 
such productions as '^ The Bubbles of the Day," the 
"Prisoners of War," &c., we think the best comment 
has been made upon them. But in truth they are of a 
kind that require to be read, and seen, and felt, rather 
than to be discoursed about. Mr. Jerrold never writes 
anything without a good leading idea, and this he works 
out chietly by sharp dialogues, and striking exhibitions 
of truthful, clearly-defined, valuable characters, all full 
of life, and of themselves. He is not a good hand at 
the conduct of a story, and worse in the construction of 
a plot. In the " Bubbles of the Day" there is wit and 
character enough for two or three five-act comedies ; and 
there is not story enough, nor action enough for a good 
one-act drama. He always succeeds, in spite of this 
utter deficiency, which is fatal to everybody else. No- 
thing can more forcibly attest the presence of other 
striking powers. His wit, and his abundance of life- 
like character, are irresistible. Kxcept, perhaps, a very 
few productions, such as the beautiful and melancholy 
sketch of " The Painter of Ghent" — the " Lord of Peir- 
esc," and some genial criticisms and miscellanies, all 
his works may be regarded as pungent moral satires. 
Thrown early upon life— a mere child, with all the world 
before him and around— his heart and brain still tumul- 
tuous, fresh from the bleak seas — with nothing but those 
two little unaided hands to work out his own immediate 
maintenance and future fortunes, and without a guide, 
except his own "natural promptings," Douglas Jerrold 
could not fail to see and suffer, and accumulate experi- 
ence of a kind to turn much of the " milk of human kind- 
ness" into gall, and the hopefulness of youth and manhood 
into shadows and sorrow. But nothing ever quelled Im 



AND DOUGLAS JERROLD. 171 

<>nergies and his belief in good ; and a passage through 
early life, of a kind sufficient to have made a score of 
ntisanthropes, and half-a-dozen yet more selfish Apa- 
thies, — only served to keep alive his energies, and to 
excite him to renewed indignation at all the wrongs 
done in the world, and to unceasing contests with all 
sorts of oppressions and evil feelings. In waging this 
battle " against odds," it is curious to observe how en- 
tirely he has been " let alone" in his course. This may 
be, in part, attributable to the greater portion of his 
writings appearing in periodicals, which are not gener- 
ally so fiercely dealt with by adverse opinions, as when 
a work comes compact in its offences before them ; and 
partly to the non-attachment of their just weight to 
dramatic productions : but it is also attributable to the 
fact, that while he is known to be thoroughly honest, 
outspoken, and fearless, he has at his command such an 
armoury in his wit, and such " a power" of bitterness in 
his spleen, that neither one, nor many have ever rel- 
ished the chances of war in crossing his path with 
hostility. 

The three writers who form the subject of the pres- 
ent paper, are so full of points and glances, so saturated 
with characteristics, that you may dip into any of their 
volumes, where the book fully opens of itself, and you 
shall find something "just like the author." The Rev. 
Sydney Smitli is always pleased to be so " pleasant," 
that it is extremely difficult to stop ; and it is remarka- 
ble that he clears off his jokes so completely as he goes, 
either by a sweeping hand, or by carrying on such frag- 
ments as he wants to form a bridge to the next one, 
that you never pause in reading him till fairly obliged to 
lay down the book. Albany Fonblanque very often 
gives you pause amidst his pleasantries, many of which, 
nay, most of which, are upon subjects of politics, or 
Jurisprudence, or the rights and wrongs of our social 
doings, so that the laugh often stops in mid-volley, and 
changes into weighty speculation, or inward applause. 
In his combined powers of the brilliant and argumenta- 
tive, the narrative and epigrammatic, and his matchless 
adroitness in illustrative quotation and reference, Fon- 
blanque stands alone, Douglas Jerrold is seldom dis- 
posed to be "pleasant" — his merriment is grim — he 
does not shake your sides so often as shake you by the 
shoulders — as he would say, "See here, now! — look 



172 REV. SYDNEY SMITH, ALBANY FONBLANaUE, 

there now ! — do you know what you are doing ! — is this 
what you think of your fellow-creatures V A little of 
his writing goes a great way. You stop very often, and 
do not return to the book for another dose, till next 
week, or so. The exceptions to this are chiefly in his 
acted comedies, where there is a plentiful admixture of 
brilliant levity and stinging fun ; but in all else he usu- 
ally reads you a lesson of a very trying kind. Even 
his writings in " Punch" give you more of the baton, 
than the beverage "in the eye." Sydney Smith has 
continually written articles for the pure enjoyment and 
communication of fun ; Fonblanque never ; Jerrold 
never, except on the stage — and that was probably only 
as "matter of income," rather than choice, Sydney 
Smith, in hostility, is an overwhelming antagonist; his 
arguments are glittering with laughter, and well bal- 
anced with good sense ; they flow onwards with the 
ease and certainty of a current above a bright cascade ; 
he piles up his merriment like a grotesque mausoleum 
over his enemy, and so compactly and regularly that 
you feel no fear of its topphng over by any retort. 
Fonblanque seems not so much to fight " on editorial 
perch," as to stand with an open Code of Social Laws 
in one hand, and a two-edged sword in the other, waving 
the latter slowly to and fro with a grave face, while dic- 
tating his periods to the laughing amanuensis. As 
Jerrold's pleasantest works are generally covert satires, 
so hi?s open satires are galling darts, or long bill-hook 
spears that go right through the mark, and divide it — 
pull it nearer for a " final eye," or thrust it over the pit's 
edge. 

All these writers have used their wit in the cause of 
humanity, and honestly, according to their several 
views of what was best, and most needful to be done, 
or done away with. They have nobly used, and scarce- 
ly ever abused the dangerous, powerful, and tempting 
weapon of the faculty of wit. Some exceptions must 
be recorded. Sydney Smith has several times sufi'ered. 
his sense of the ridiculous to " run away" with his bet- 
ter feelings ; and in subjects which were in themselves 
of a painful, serious, or shocking nature, he has allowed 
an absurd contingent circumstance to get the upper 
hand, to the injury, or discomfiture, or offence, of na- 
ture and society. Such was the fun he made of the 
locking people in railway-carriages upon the occasion 



AND DOUGLAS JERROLD. 173 

of the frightful catastrophe at Versailles. Fonblanque 
has continually boiled and sparkled round the extreme 
edge of the same offence ; but we think he has never 
actually gushed over. The same may be nearly said 
of Jerrold, though we think he has been betrayed b}' 
that scarcely resistible good or evil genius " a new sub- 
ject" into several papers which he had much better 
never have vt'ritten. One — the worst — should be men- 
tioned : it is the " Metaphysician and the Maid."* 

]\o doubt can exist as to who the bad satire was 
raeant for. This was of itself sufficiently bad in the et 
tu Brute sense ; but besides the personal hit, it has 
graver errors. If the paper had been meant to ridicule 
pretended thinkers, and besotted dreamers, those who 
prattle about motives, and springs, and " intimate knowl- 
edge" charlatan philosophers, or even well-meaning 
transcendentalists " who darken knowledge ;" and if it 
had also been intended to laugh at a man for a vulgar 
amour, the mistaking a mere sensuality for a sentimeat, 
or a doll for a divinity — all were so far very well and 
good. The " hit" at a man desperately in love who 
was in the middle of an essay on " Free Will," is all 
fair, and fine wit. But here the sincere and earnest 
thinker is ridiculed ; — a well-known sincere and pro- 
found thinker having been selected to stand for the 
class ; — his private feelings are ridiculed (his being in a 
state of illusion as to the object, is too common to 
serve as excuse for the attack) — his passion for abstract 
truth is jested upon, and finally his generosity and un- 
worldly disinterestedness. But the " true man's hand" 
misgave him in doing this deed. The irresistible " new 
subject" was not so strong as his own heart, and the 
iifluence of the very author he was, in this brief in- 
■ tance, turning into ridicule, was so full upon him that 
while intending to write a burlesque upon '' deep think- 
i.ig," he actually wrote as follows, — 

" He alone, who has for months, nay years, lived upon great imaginings — 
whose subject hath been a part of his blood— a. throb of his pulse — hath scarce- 
ly faded from his brain as he hath fallen to sleep— hath waked with him— 
hith, in his squalid study, glorified even poverty— )ia.th. walked with him 
abroad, and by its ennobling presence, raised him above t'le prejudice, the 
little spite, the studied negligence, the sturdy wrong, that m his out-dwr life 
aaeer upon and elbow him — he alone, can understand the calm, deep, yet, se- 
rene joy felt by * * *" 

The foregoing noble and affecting passage — the cli- 

* " Cakes and Ale," vol ii., p. 175 
P2 



174 REV. SYDNEY SMITH, ALBANY FONBLANaUE, 

max of which is forced into a dull and laboured absurd- 
ity — is more than a parody, it is an unintentional imita- 
tion derived from some dim association with the well- 
known passage of Hazlitt's, commencing with — " There 
are moments in the life of a solitary thinker, which are 
to him wliat the evening of some great victory is to the 
conqueror — milder triumphs long remembered with 
truer and deeper delight, &c."* We leave these two 
passages with Mr. Jerrold for his own most serious con- 
sideration ; — the original terminating with a natural cli- 
max — his own so abominably. It is probable that we 
could say nothing more strongly in reprehension than 
-Vlr. Jerrold will say to himself. As for the satire upon 
the weaknesses or follies of the strongest-minded men 
when in love, the " Liber Amoris" left nothing to be 
added to its running commentary of melancholy irony 
upon itself and its author. 

It is customary in speaking of great wits, to record 
and enjoy their •' last ;" but there are, at this time, sO' 
many of Sydney Smith's " last" in the shape of remarks 
on the insolvent States of America, that it is difficult to 
choose. If, however, we were obhged to make selec- 
tion for " our own private eating," we should point to 
the bankrupt army marching to defend their plunder, 
with are alieno engraved upon the trumpets. For the 
voice of a trumpet can be made the most defying and 
insulting of all possible sounds, and in this instance 
even the very insolence of the ''special pleader" is sto- 
len — (zre alieno, another man's sarce !-\ 

Mr. Fonblanque's " last" are so regularly seen in the 
" Examiner," and there will, in all probability, have 
been so many of them before these pages are publish- 
ed, that we must leave the reader to cater for himself; 
and more particularly as it would be impossible to please 
" all parties" with tranchant political jokes upon matters 
of immediate interest and contest. But nothing can 
more forcibly prove the true value of Mr. Fonblanque's 
wit than the fact that all the papers collected in " Eng- 
land under Seven Administrations" were written upon 
passing events ; that most of the events are passed, 
and the wit remains. A greater disadvantage no wri- 
tings ever had to encounter; yet they are read with 

* Hazlitt's " Principlee of Human Action." 

t It also suggests the Latim idiom of wre alieno cxirc — a now way to pay, 
old debts. 



AND DOUGLAS JERROLD. 175 

pleasure and admiration ; and, in many instances, yet 
but too fresh and vigorous, with improvement, and re- 
newed wonder that certain abuses should be of so long 
life. 

Mr. Jerrold's two "last" we may select from the 
*' History of a Feather," and the " Folly of the Sword." 
In the first we shall allude to the biting satire of the 
Countess of Blusbrose, who being extremely beautiful 
■was very proud and unfeeling towards the poor; bu: 
after over-dancing herself one night at a ball, she got 
the erysipelas which spoiled her face, and she then be- 
came an angel of benevolence who could never stir 
abroad without " walking in a shower of blessings." In 
the second we find the follosving remark on war and 
glory. 

" Now look aside, and contemplate God's image with a musket. "What a 
fine-looking- thing- is war I Yet, dress it as we may, dress and feather it, 
daub it -with gold, huzza it, and sing swaggering songs about it — what is it, 
nine times out of ten, but Murder in uniform ? Cain taking the Serjeant's 
shilling? * * * Yet, oh man of war! at this very moment are you shrink- 
ing, withering like an aged giant. The ringers of Opinion have been busy 
at your plumes — you are not the feathered thing you were ; and then this 
little tube, the goose-quill, has sent its silent shots into your huge anatomy ; 
jind the corroding Ink, even whilst you look at it, and think it shines so 
brightly, is eating -with a tooth of iron into your sword 1" 

Our last extract shall be from Sydney Smith's cele- 
brated Letters to Peter Plymley, and on a subject now 
likely to occupy the public mind still more than at the 
time it was penned : — 

" Our conduct to Ireland, during the -whole of this war, has been that of a 
man who subscribes to hospitals, weeps at charity sermons, carries out broth 
and blankets to beggars, and then comes home and beats his wife and chil- 
dren. We had compassion for th-? victims of all other ojipression and injus- 
tice, except our own. If Switzerland was threatened, away went a Treasury 
Clerk with a hundred thousand pounds for Switzerland ; large bags of mon^ 
■were kept constantly under sailing orders ; upon the slightest demonstration 
towards Naples, down went Sir William Hamilton upon his knees, and beg- 
ged for the love of St. Januarius they would help us off with a little money ; 
all the arts of Machiavel were resorted to, to persuade Europe to borrow 
troops were sent off in all directions to save the Catholic and Protestarf 
world ; the Pope himself was guarded by a regiment of English dragoons ; i! 
the Grand Lama had been at hand, he would h-ave had another ; every Cath- 
olic Clergyman, who had the good fortune to be neither English nor Irish, 
^/vas immediately provided -vyith lodging, soup, crucifix, missal, chaj)el-beads, 
relics, and holy water; if Turks had landed, Turks would have received an. 
order from the Treasury for coffee, opium, korans, and seraglios. In the 
midst of all this fury of saving and defetiding, this crusade of conscience and 
Christianity, there was an universal agreement among all descriptions of 
people to continue every species of internal persecution : to deny at home 
every just riglit that had been denied before ; to pummel poor Dr. Abraham 
Rees and his Dissenters ; and to treat the unhappy Catholics of Ireland as if 
their tongues were mute, their heels cloven, their nature brutal, and desigiu 
edly subjected by Providence to their Orange masters. 



176 REV. SYDNEY SMITH, ALBANY FONBLANCIUE, 

" How would my admirable brotlier, the Rev. Abraham Plymley, lihe t» 
Iv. marched to a Catholic chapel, to be sprinkled with the sanctified contents 
of a pump, to hear a number of false quantities in the Latin tongue, and to 
see a. uumber of persons occupied in making- right angles upon the breast 
suid forehead 1 And if all this would give you so much pain, what right 
2iave you to march Catholic soldiers to a place of worship, where there is no 
aspersion, no rectangular gestures, and where they vruicrstand ever;/ word they 
hear, having first, in order to get him to enlist, made a solemn promise lo the 
contrary? Can you wonder, after this, that the Catholic priest stops the re- 
croiting in Ireland, as he is now doing to a most alarming degree ?" 

The influence of these three writers has been exten- 
sive, and vigorously beneficial — placing their politics 
out of the question. Their aqua fortis and " laughing 
gas" have exercised alike a purificatory office ; their 
championship has been strong on the side of social 
ameliorations and happy progress. The deep impor- 
tance of national education on a proper system has been 
finely advocated by each in his peculiar way — Sydney 
Smith by excessive ridicule of the old and present sys- 
tem ; Fonblanque by administering a moral cane and 
caustic to certain pastors and masters and ignorant 
pedagogues of all kinds : and Jerrold by such tales as 
the " Lives of Brown, Jones, and Robinson," (in vol. ii. 
of " Cakes and Ale,") and by various essays. If in the 
conflict of parties the Rev. Sydney Smith and Mr. Fon- 
blanque have once or twice been sharply handled, they 
might reasonably have expected much worse. As for 
vague accusations of levity and burlesque, and want of 
*' a well-regulated mind," and trifling and folly, those 
things are always said of all such men. It is observa- 
ble that very dull men and men incapable of wit — ei- 
ther in themselves, or of the comprehension of it in 
others— invariably call every witty man, and every 
witty saying, which is not quite agreeable to them- 
selves, by the term flippant. Let the wits and humour- 
ists be consoled ; they have the best of it, and the dull 
ones know it. 



WILLIAM WORDSWORTH AND LEIGH 
HUNT. 

" I jiidge him for a rectified spirit, 
By many revolutions of discourse, 
(In his bright reason's iniluence) refined 
From all the tartarous moods of common men ; 
Bearing- the nature and similitude 
Of a right heavenly body ; most severe 
In fashion and collection of himself; 
And, then, as clear and confident as Jove." — Ben Jonsoi?. 

" You will see H— t ; one of those happy souls 
Which are the salt o' the earth, and without whom 
This world would smell like what it is — a tomb." — Shellet- 

" Most dehonnaire, in courtesy supreme ; 
Loved of the mean, and honoured by the great ; 
Ne'er dashed by Fortune, nar cast down by Fate ; 
To present and to after times a theme." — Drummond. 

Thesg two laurelled veterans, whose lives are clad 
with the eternal youth of poesy, have been so long be- 
fore the public, and their different and contrasted claims 
may be thought to have been so thoroughly settled, that, 
it will, perhaps, as a first impression, be considered that 
there was no necessity for including them in this work. 
They aue, however, introduced as highly important con- 
necting links between past and present periods ; as the 
outlivers of many storms ; the originators of many opin- 
ions and tastes ; the sufferers of odium, partly for their 
virtues, and in some respects for their perversities ; and 
the long wounded but finally victorious experiencers of 
popular changes of mind during many years. If, there- 
fore, it should still be thought that nothing very new re- 
mains to be said of them, it is submitted that at leas 
there are some truths concerning both, which have neve^ 
yet been fairly brought into public notice. 

When Mr. Wordsworth first stood before the work 
as a poet, he might as well, for the sorriness of his re 
ception, have stood before the world as a prophet. In 
some such position, perhaps, it may be said he actually 
did stand ; and he had prophet's fare in a shower of 
stones. For several generations, had the cadences of 
our poets (so called) moved to them along the ends of 
their fingers. Their language had assumed a conven- 



178 WILLIAM WORDS VVOllTH 

tlonal elegance, spreading smoothly into pleonasms or 
•clipped nicely into elisions. The point of an antithesis 
had kept perpetual sentry upon the ' final pause ;' and 
"while a spurious imagination made a Name stand as a 
.personification, Observation only looked out of window 
(" with extensive view%" indeed . . " from China to Pe- 
ru !") and refused very positively to take a step out of 
doors. A long and dreary decline of poetry it was, 
from the high-rolling sea of Dryden, or before Dryden, 
when Waller first began to " improve" (bona verba !) 
our versification — down to the time of Wordsworth. 
Miitjon's far-off voice, in the meantime, was a trumpet, 
which the singing birds could not take a note from : his 
genius was a lone island in a remote sea, and singularly 
Uiiinfluential on his contemporaries and immediate suc- 
cessors. The decline sloped on. And that edition of 
the poets which was edited by Dr. Johnson for popular 
uses, and in which he and liis publishers did advisedly 
obliterate from the chronicles of the people, every poet 
l^efore Cowley, and force the Chancers, Spencers, and 
Draytons to give place to " Pomfrei's Choice" and the 
■^ Art of Cookery," — is a curious proof of poetical and 
-critical degradation. " Every child is graceful," ob- 
serves Sir Joshua Reynolds, with a certain amount of 
truth, " until he has learnt to dance." We had learned 
to dance with a vengeance — we could not move except 
we danced — the French .school pirouetted in us most 
anti-nationally. The age of Shakspeare and our great 
ancestral writers had grown to be rococo — they were 
men of genius and deficient in ' taste,' but loe were wits 
and classics — we exceeded in civilization, and wore 
wigs. It was not, how^ever, to end so. 

Looking back to the experiences of nations, a national 
literature is seldom observed to recover its voice after 
an absolute declension ; the scattered gleaners may be 
singing in the stubble, but the great song of the harvest 
sounds but once. Into the philosophy of this fact it 
would take too much space to enquire. That genius 
comes as a periodical effluence, and in dependence ou 
unmanifest causes, is the confession of grave thinkers, 
rather than fanciful speculators ; and perhaps if the 
Roman empire, for instance, could have endured in 
strength, and held its mighty breath until the next tide, 
some Latin writer would have emerged from the on- 
ward flood of inspiration which was bearing Dante to 



AND LEIGH HUNT. 179 

the world's wide shores. Unlike Dante, indeed, would 
have been that writer — for no author, however influen- 
tial on his contemporaries, can be perfectly independent 
himself of their influences — but he would" have been a 
Latin writer, and his hexameters worth waiting: for, 
And England did not wait in vain for a new effluence of 
genius — it came at last like the morning — a pale light 
in the sky, an awakening bird, and a sunburst — we had 
Cowper — we had Burns — that lark of the new grey 
dawn ; and presently the early-risers of the land could 
see to spell slowly out the name of William Words- 
worth. They saw and read it ci-early with those of 
Coleridge and Leigh Hunt, — and subsequently of Shel- 
ley and Keats, notwithstanding the dazzling beams of 
lurid power w]iich were in full radiation from the en- 
grossing name of Byron. 

Mr. Wordsworth began his day with a dignity and 
determination of purpose, which might well have star- 
tled the public and all its small poets and critics, his 
natural enemies. He laid down fixed principles in his 
prefaces, and carried them out with rigid boldness, in 
his poems ; and when the world laughed, he bore it 
well, for his logic apprized him of what should follow : 
nor was he without the sympathy of Coleridge and a 
iG\Y other first-rate intellects. W^ith a severe hand he 
tore away from his art the encumbering artifices of his 
predecessors ; and he walked upon the pride of criticism 
with greater pride. No toleration would he extend to» 
the worst laws of a false critical code ; nor any concil- 
iation to the critics who had enforced them. He was a 
poet, and capable of poetry, he thought, only as he was 
a man and faithful to his humanity. He would not sep- 
arate poetry and nature, even in their forms. Instead 
of being " classical" and a " wit," he would be li poefe 
and a man, and " like a man," (notwithstanding certain 
weak moments) he spoke out bravely, in language, free 
of the current phraseology and denuded of conventional 
adornments, the thought which was in him. And the- 
thought and the word witnessed to that verity of natirrs, 
which is eternal with variety. He laid his hand upon the 
Pegasean mane, and testified that it was not floss silk. 
He testified that the ground was not all lawn ot bowling-- 
green ; and that the forest trees were not clippe<l npoa 
a pattern. He scorned to be contented with a tradition 
of beauty, or with an abstraction of the beautiful. He 



180 WILLIAM WORDSWORTH 

refused to work, as others had done, like those sculp- 
tors, who make all their noses in the fashion of that of 
the Medicisan Venus ; until no one has his own nose ; 
nature being " cut to order." William Wordsworth 
would accept no type for nature : he would take no leap 
at the generalization of the natural ; and the brown moss 
upon the pale should be as sacred to him and acceptable 
to his song, as the pine-clothed mountain. He is a poet 
of detail, and sings of what is closest to his eye ; as small 
starting points for far views, deep sentiment, and com- 
prehensive speculation. " The meanest flower that 
blows" is not too mean for him ; exactly because 
*' thoughts too deep for tears" lie for him in the mys- 
tery of its meanness. He has proved this honour on the 
universe ; that in its meanest natural thing is no vul- 
garism, unconveyed by the artificiality of human man- 
ners. That such a principle should lead to some pue- 
xilities at the outset, was not surprising. 

A minute observer of exterior nature, his humanity 
seems nevertheless to stand between it and him ; and 
Jie confounds those two lives — not that he loses him- 
self in the contemplation of things, but that he absorbs 
them in himself, and renders them Wordsworthian. 
They are not what he wishes, until he has brought them 
home to his own heart. Chaucer and Burns made the 
most of a daisy, but left it still a daisy ; Mr. Words- 
worth leaves it transformed into his thoughts. This is 
the sublime of egotism, disinterested as extreme. It is 
on the entity of the man Wordsworth, that the vapour 
creeps along the hill — and " the mountains are a feel- 
ing." To use the language of the German schools, he 
makes a subjectivity of his objectivity. Beyond the 
habits and purposes of his individuality, he caimot carry 
his sympathies ; and of all powerful writers, he is the 
least dramatic. Another reason, however, for his dra- 
matic inaptitude, is his deficiency in passion. He is 
passionate in his will and reason, but not in his senses 
and affections ; and perhaps scarcely in his fancy and 
imagination. He has written, however, one of thp no- 
blest odes in the English langa.ige, in his " Recollections 
of Childhood;'^ and his chief poem, "The Excursion," 
which is only a portion of a larger work (to be published 
hereafter) called "The Recluse," h;is passages of very 
glorious exaltation. Still, he is seldom impulsive ; and 
his exaltation is rather the nobly-acquired habit of his 



AND LEIGH HUNT. 181 

mind than the prerogative of his temperament. A great 
Christian inorHlist and teacher, he is sacerdotal bum m 
gravity and purity ; he is majestic and sell-possessed. 
Like many oilier great inen, lie can be dull aiiu prolix. 
It" lie has not written too many sonneis, it may be uoubt- 
ed il" he has not burned too lew : none are bau, it is true ; 
but the value of the linest would be enhanced by separ- 
ation from so much fatiguing good sense. 'J'hey would 
be far more read. Pernaps, Ins gravity and moral aim 
are Mr. Wordsworth's most prevailing characteristics. 
His very cheerfulness is a smiie over tiie altar, — a siniie 
of beneuiction which no one dares return — and expres- 
sive of good will rather than sympathy. 

These remarks have doubtless occurred to many stu- 
dents and admirers of Wordsworth; but ii is more re- 
markable that he is what he is, not unconsciously or 
instinctively, as many other men of genius have devel- 
oped their idiosyncrasies; but consciously, to all ap- 
pearance, and determmately, and by a particular act of 
the will. Moreover, he is not only a self-conscious 
thinker and feeler ; but he is conscious, apparently, of 
this self-consciousness. 

When Mr. Wordsworth had published his " Lyrical 
Ballads," out swarmed the critics — with reference to 
the accidental gathering together in his neighbourhood 
of certain poets (who, although men of genius and im- 
patient of the trammels of the scholastic rhymers, were 
not so " officially" reformers, nor partakers of his char- 
acteristics ;) — out swarmed the critics, declaring that 
the Lyrical Balladmonger had a school, and that it should 
be called the *' Lake School." It was a strange mis- 
take, even for the craft. Here was a man reproached 
by themselves, with all anti-scholastic offences, a man 
who had made mock at the formulas, confused the class- 
es, and turned the schoolmasters out of doors ! and he 
must be placed in a school, forsooth, for the sake of 
those who could discern nothing out of the subdivis- 
ions of the schools. The critical " memoria technica" 
required that it should be so arranged. And, verily, 
when Wordsworth and his peers looked up to the sub- 
lime Lake mountains, and down to the serene Lake wa- 
ters, they were probably consoled for the slang, by the 
dignity and holiness of this enforced association. It 
was otherwise in the matter of another calling of names, 
nearly simultaneously effected; when Leigh IJunt and 
Q 



182 WILLIAM WORDSWORTH 

his friends were saluted in London, by that nickname of 
the " Cockney School," which was so incessantly re- 
peated and applied to almost everybody who ventured 
to write averse, that at length it became the manifest 
sign of a juvenile Cockney critic to use the term. It 
was presently superseded by the new nickname of " Sa- 
tanic School," which, however, unlike the others, had 
some sort of foundation. 

The Cockney School was as little-minded a catch- 
word of distinctive abuse as ever came from the splen- 
etic pen of a writer " at a loss for something." The 
cheek of the impartial historian, as of the true critic of 
present times, flushes in having to recount, tliat Lamb, 
who stammered out in child- like simplicity, his wit 
beautiful with wisdom — that Coleridge, so full of ge- 
nius and all rare acquirements— that Hazlitt, who dwelt 
gloriously with philosophy in a chamber of imagery — 
that Sheiley, with his wings of golden fire — that Keats 
who saw divine visions, and the pure Greek ideal, be- 
cause he had the essence in his soul— that Leigh Hunt 
(now the sole survivor of all these) true poet and exqui- 
site essayist— and finally Alfred Tennyson — were of 
the writers so stigmatized ! Eventually the term was 
used as a reproach by people who had never been out 
of London, and by Scotchmen who had never been out 
of p]dinburgh — and then— that is, when this fact was 
discovered pretty generally — then the epithet was no- 
more heard. But while in use, its meaning seemed ta 
be — pastoral, minus nature ; and it is a curious and stri- 
king fact, that every one of the eminent men to whom 
it was applied was a marked example of the very con- 
trary characteristic. It hence would appear that the 
term was chiefly applicable to the men themselves who 
used it ; because, knowing nothing of pastoral nature, 
they did not recognize it when placed before them, but 
conceived it must be a mere afl'ectation of something 
beyond their own civic ideas. If the word had meant 
simply an exclusion, as livers in cities, from a familiar- 
ity with the country— if it had meant the acquirement 
of conventional views and artificial habits from this ac- 
cident of place ; then it suited Dr. Johnson, Pope, and 
his " wits about town" with tolerable propriety. 

Leigh Hunt, the poet of " Foliage" and the " Story 
of Rimini," the author of some of the most exquisite 
essays in the English language, of a romance (" Sir 



AXD LEIGH HUNT. 183 

Ralph Eshcr,") full of power and beauty, and of the 
" Legend of Florence," a production remarkable for 
dramatic excellence and a pure spirit of generous and 
refined morality, is likely to be honoured with more 
love from posterity, than he ever received, or can hope 
to receive, from his contemporary public. Various cir- 
cumstances combined to the ruffling of the world be- 
neath his feet — and the two years of his imprisonment 
for libel, w^hen he covered his prison-walls with gar- 
lands of roses, and lived, in spite of fate and the king's 
attorney-general, in a bower — present a type, in the 
smiling quaintness of their oppositions, of the bitterness 
and sweetness, the constraint and gay-heartedness of 
his whole life besides. At the very time he was thus 
imprisoned, his physician had ordered him much horse- 
exercise, his health having been greatly impaired by 
sedentary habits. Still, he covered the walls of his 
room with garlands. 

On a survey of the ordinary experiences of poets, we 
are apt to come hastily to a conclusion, that a true poet 
may have quite enough tribulation by his poetry, for all 
good purposes of adversity, without finding it necessa- 
ry to break any fresh ground of vexation : — but Leigh 
Himt, imprudent in his generation, w^as a gallant politi- 
cian, as well as a genuine poet ; and, by his connection 
with the " Examiner" newspaper, did, in all the super- 
fluity of a youth full of animal spirits, sow the whirl- 
wind and reap the tornado. We have also heard of 
some other literary offences of thirty or forty years ago, 
but nobody cares to recollect them. In religious feel- 
ing, however, he has been misrepresented. It is cer- 
tain that no man was ever more capable of the spirit 
of reverence ; for God gifted him with a loving genius 
■ — with a genius to love and bless. He looks full ten- 
derly into the face of every man, and woman, and child, 
and living creature ; and the beautiful exterior world, 
even when it is in angry mood, he smoothes down soft- 
ly, as in recognition of its sentiency, with a gentle ca- 
ressing of the fancy— Chaucer's irrepressible " Ah, ben- 
edicite," falling for ever from his lips ! There is an- 
other point of resemblance between him and several 
of the elder poets, who have a social joyous full-heart- 
edness ; a pathetic sweetness ; a love of old stories, 
and of sauntering about green places ; and a liking for 
sj-ardens and drest nature, as well as fields and forests; 



184 WILLIAM WORDSWORTH 

though he is not always so simple as they, in his mode 
of describing-, but is apt to elaborate his admiration, 
while his eider brothers described the thing — and left it 
so. He presses into association with the old Eliza- 
bethan singing choir, just as the purple light from Italy 
and Marini had flushed their foreheads ; and he is an 
Italian scholar himself, besides having read the Greek 
idyls. He has drunken deep from " the beaker full of 
the warm South," and loves to sit in the sun, indolent- 
ly turning and shaping a fancy " light as air," or — and 
here he has never had justice done him — in brooding 
deeply over the welfare, the struggles, and hopes of 
humanity. Traces of this high companionship and 
these pleasant dispositions are to be found like laven- 
der between the leaves of his books ; while a fragrance 
native to the ground— which would be enough for the 
reader's pleasure, though the lavender were shaken out 
— diffuses Itself fresh and peculiar over all. He is aii 
original writer: his individuality extending into man- 
nerism, which is individuality prominent in the mode. 
When he says new things, he puts them strikingly ; 
when he says old things, he puts them newly — and no 
intellectual and good-tempered reader will complain of 
this freshness, on account of a certain "knack at tri- 
fling," in which he sometimes chooses to indulge. He 
does, in fact, constrain such a reader into sympathy 
with him — constrain him to be glad " with the spirit of 
joy" of which he, the poet, is possessed — and no living 
poet has that obvious and overflowing delight in the 
bare act of composition, of which this poet gives sign. 
'Composition' is not a word for him — we might as 
well use it of a bird — such is the ease with which it 
seems to flow ! Yet he is an artist and constructor 
also, and is known to work very hard at times before 
it comes out so bright, and graceful, and pretending to 
have cost no pains at all. He spins golden lines round 
and round and round, as a silk-worm in its cocoon- 
He is not without consciousness of art. — only he is 
conscious less of design in it, than of pleasure and 
beauty. His excessive consciousness of grace in the 
turning of a line, and of richness in the perfecting of an 
image, is what some people have called " coxcombry :" 
and the manner of it approaclies to that conscious, side- 
long, swimming gait, balancing between the beautiful 
and the witty, which is remarkable in some elder po- 



AND LEIGH HUNT. 185 

ets. Ris versification is sweet and various, running 
into Chaucer's cadences. His blank verse is the most 
successfully original in its freedom, of any that has ap- 
peared since the time of Beaumont and Fletcher. His 
images are commonly beautiful, if often fantastic — 
clustering like bees, or like grapes — sometimes too 
many for the vines — a good fault in these bare modern 
days. His gatherings from nature are true to nature ; 
Tind wc might quote passages whicli would disprove the 
old bygone charge of ' Cockneyism,' by showing that 
lie had brought to bear an exceeding niceness of actual 
observation upon the exterior world. His nature, how- 
ever, is seldom moor-land and mountain- land ; nor is it, 
for the most part, English nature — we have hints of 
fauns and the nymphs lying hidden in the shadow of 
the old Italian woods ; and the sky overhead is several 
tints too blue for home experiences. It is nature, not 
by tradition, like Pope's nature, nor quite by sensation 
and reflection, like Wordsworth's : it is nature by mem- 
ory and phantasy; true, but touched with an exotic 
purple. His sympathies with men are wide as the dis- 
tance betvveen joy and grief: and while his laughter is 
audible and resistless, in pathos and depth of tender 
passionateness, he is no less sufficient. The tragic 
power of the " Story of Rimini," has scarcely been ex- 
ceeded by any English poet, alive or dead ; and his 
*' Legend of Florence," is full of the ' purification of 
pity,' and the power of the most Christian-like man- 
hood and sympathy. We might have fancied that the 
consciousness of pleasure in composition, which has 
been attributed to this poet, and the sense of individu- 
ality which it implies, W'Ould have interfered with the 
right exercise of the dramatic faculty — but the reason 
of tears is probably stronger in him than the conscious- 
■ iiess of beauty. He has in him, and has displayed it 
occasionally, an exaltation and a sense of the divine, 
under a general aspect : a very noble dramatic lyric on 
the liberation of the soul from the body, published with- 
in the last seven 5^ears, has both those qualities, in the 
highest degree. 

In attempting some elucidatory contrast between the 
poets William Wordsworth and Leigh Hunt, as one of 
the applications of the foregoing remarks, it is not 
meant that their positions as poets and teachers (and 
all poets must be teachers) are alike in any external 
Q 2 



186 WILLIAM WORDSWORTH 

respects. We are not to forget that Mr. Wordsworth 
took the initiative in the great poetical movement of 
his times. Both, however, are poets and teachers, and 
both have been martyrs by distinction of persecution, 
and both were placed in " a school," by the critics, in a 
manner unsolicited and unjustified. Both are poets, 
but Wordsworth is so upon a scheme, and determinate- 
ly ; Hunt, because he could not help it, and instinctively 
— the first, out of the entireness of his will ; the last, out 
of the fuhiess of his fancy. Both were reformers, but 
Hunt, like Melancthon, despising the later, and cleaving 
to the earlier Christians, — embraced the practice of 
Chaucer and of the Elizabethan men, as eagerly as a. 
doctrine ; while Wordsworth threw himself straight 
over all the fathers and ancestral poets, into the ' phi- 
losophia prima' of first principles. Not that Hunt reject- 
ed the first principles, nor Wordsworth the ancestral 
poets ; but that the instinct of the former worked in 
him, while the ratiocination of the latter worked out of 
him. Both have an extraordinary consciousness— but 
Wordsworth has it in the determination of ends, and 
Hunt in the elaboration of details ; — and in the first we 
discover the duty of the artist, and in the latter his 
pleasure. In exterior nature, Wordsworth has a wider 
faith, or a less discriminating taste. He draws her up 
into the embrace of his soul as he sees her, undivided 
and unadorned — a stick in the hedge he would take up' 
into his song— but Hunt believes in nothing except 
beauty, and would throw away the stick, or cover it 
with a vine or woodbine. Mr. Hunt is more impression- 
able towards men — Wordsworth holds their humanity 
within his own, and teaches them out of it, and blesses 
them from the heights of his priestly oftice, — while it is 
enough for the other poet to weep and smile with them 
openly, what time he ' blesseth them unaware.' Hunt 
is more passionate, more tragic ; and he has also a more 
rapid fancy, and a warmer imagination under certain 
aspects ; but Wordsworth exceeds him in the irnaghia- 
tion ' in inlellectu.'' The imagination of the latter calls 
«o " spirit," nor men from the vasty deep, but is almost 
entirely confined to the illustration of his own thoughts. 
The imagination of the former is habitually playful, and 
not disposed for sustained high exercise. William 
Wordsworth is a spiritual singer, a high religious sing- 
er, and none the less holy because he stands firmly still 



AND LEIGH HUNT. 1^7 

to reason among the tossings of the censers ; while 
Leigh Hunt is disposed to taste the odours of each whilo 
the worship is going on. Wordsworth is habitually 
cold, distant, grave, inflexible; Hunt exactly the oppo- 
site in each respect. The sympathies of Leigh Hunt 
are universal, in philosophy and in private habits ; the 
poetical sympathies of William W^ordsworth are with 
primitive nature and humble life, but his personal sym- 
pathies are aristocratical. Leigh Hunt converses as 
well as he writes, often better, ready on every point, 
with deep sincerity on all serious subjects, and fai in 
advance of his age ; with a full and pleasant memory, 
of books, and men, and things ; and with a rich sense of 
humour and a quick wit. Mr. Wordsworth does not 
converse. He announces formally at times, but he can- 
not find a current. He is moral, grave, good-natured,. 
and of kindly intercourse. He does not understand a 
joke, but requires it to be explained ; after wiiich he 
looks uneasy. It is not his point. He sees nothing in 
it. The thing is not, and cannot be made Wordsvvorth- 
ian. He reads poetry very grandly, and with solem- 
nity. Leigh Hunt also reads admirably, and with the 
most expressive variety of inflection, and natural em- 
phasis. He is fond of music, and sings and accom- 
panies himself with great expression. Wr. Words- 
worth does not care much about music. He prefers to 
walk on the mountains in a high wind, bare-headed and 
alone, and listen to the far-ofi" roar of streams, and 
watch the scudding clouds while he repeats his verse 
aloud. 

Certain opinions concerning eminent men which have 
grown into the very fibres of the public mind, are al- 
ways expected to be repeated whenever the individual 
is spoken of. To this there may be no great objection, 
provided a writer conscientiously feels the truth of those 
opinions. With reference, therefore, to Wordsworth, 
as the poet of profound sentiment, elevated humanity, 
and religious emotion, responding to the universe around, 
we respectfully accept and record the popular impres- 
sion ; asking permission, however, to offer a few re- 
marks of our own for further consideration. 

After the public had denied Mr. Wordsworth the pos- 
session of any of the highest faculties of the mind du- 
ring twenty years, the same public has seen good of 
late to reward him with all the highest faculties in ex- 



188 WILLIAM WORDSWORTH 

cess. The imagination of Wordsworth is sublime in 
elevation, and as the illustrator of reflection; but it is 
very limited. It is very deficient in invention, see his 
*' Poems of the Imagination." They perfectly settle the 
question. The fine things which are there (in rather 
indifferent company) we know, and devoutly honour : 
but we also know "what is not there. He has a .small 
creative spirit ; narrow, without power, and ranging 
over a barren field. These remarks cannot honeslly be 
quoted apart from the rest of what is said of Mr. Words- 
worth ; such remarks, however, must be made, or the 
genius in question is not justly measured. He has no 
sustained plastic energies ; no grand constructive power 
in general design of a continuous whole, either of sub- 
ject, or of individual characters. His universality is in 
humanity, not in creative energies. He has no creative 
passion. His greatness is lofty and reflective, and his 
imagination turns like a zodiac upon its own centre, lit 
by its own internal sun. If at times it resembles the 
bare, dry, attenuated littleness of a school-boy's hoop, 
he may insist upon admiring this as much as his best 
things, but posterity will not be convinced. It is in 
vain to be obstinate against time ; for some day the 
whole truth is sure to be said, and some day it is sure 
to be believed. 

The prose writings of these distinguished poets are 
strikingly qualified to bring under one view these va- 
rious points of contrast : and yei it must be granted, at 
the first glance, tliat Wordsworth's prose is only an ex- 
position of the principles of his poetry, or highly valu- 
able as an appendix to his poems ; while if Leigh Hunt 
had never written a line as a poet, his essays would 
have proved him an exquisite writer, and established 
his claim upon posterity. As it is, he has two claims ; 
and is not likely to be sent back for either of them, not 
even as the rival of Addison. The motto to his " Lon- 
don Journal" is highly characteristic of him — " To as- 
sist the inquiring, animate the struggling, and sympa- 
thise with all."" The very philosophy of cheerfulness 
and the good humour of genius imbue all his prose 
papers from end to end ; and if the best dreamer of us 
all should dream of a poet at leisure, and a scholar '■'■in 
idleness," neither scholar nor poet would speak, in that 
air of dreamland, more graceful, wise and scholar-like 
fancies than are written in his books. Mr. Wordsworth 



AND LEIGH HUNT. 189 

on tlie other hand remits nothing of his poetic austerity, 
when he condescends to speak prose ; if anything, he 
is graver than ever, with an additional tone of the dic- 
tator. He teaches as from the chair, and with the ges- 
ture of a master, as he is — learnedly, wisely, sometimes 
eloquently, and not unseldom coldly and heavily, and 
with dull redundancy ; but always with a self-possess- 
ed and tranquil faith in the truth which is in him, and 
(considering it is poet's prose) with a curious deficiency 
of imagery and metaphor, not as if in disdain of the 
adornment and illustration, but rather as being unable 
to ascend from the solid level without the metrical 
pinions. 

The work that Leigh Hunt has done, may be ex- 
pressed in the few words of a dedication made to him 
some years since.* "You have long assisted," says 
the dedication — "largely and most successfully — to^ 
educate the hearts and heads of both old and young ; 
and the extent of the service is scarcely perceptible, because 
the free and familiar spirit in which it has been rendered^ 
gives it the semblance of an involuntary emanation. The 
spontaneous diffusion of intelligence and good feeling 
is not calculated, however, to force its attention upoa 
general perception, &c." The meaning of all this is,, 
that Leigh Hunt has no "system," and no sustained 
gravity of countenance, and therefore the fineness of 
his intellect, and the great value of his unprofessor-like 
teaching has been extremely underrated. The dedica- 
tion also marks this disgrace to the age — which shall 
be as distinctly stated as such a disgrace deserves — that 
while the public generally takes it for granted that Mr. 
Leigh Hunt is on the Pension List, he most certainly is. 
not, and never has been ! 

Both of these authors have written too much ; Words- 
worth from choice ; Leigh Hunt less from choice than 
necessity. The first thinks that all he has written must 
be nearly of equal value, because he takes equal pains 
with everything ; the second evidently knows the in- 
feriority of many of his productions — "but what is a 
poet to do who follows literature as a profession ?'* 
Few can afford to please themselves. In this respect, 
however, Mr. Wordsworth is always successful. 

After twenty years of public abuse and laughter, 
William Wordsworth is now regarded by the public of 

* See " Death of Marlowe." 



190 WILLIAM WORDSWORTH 

the same country, as the prophet of his age. And this 
is not a right view — after all. Wordsworth's feeling 
for pastoral nature, and the depths of sentiment which 
he can deduce from such scenes, and the lesson of hu- 
manity he can read to the heart of man, are things, in 
themselves, for all time ; but as the prophetic spirit is 
essentially that of a passionate foreseeing and annun- 
ciation of some extraneous good tidings to man ; in this 
sense Wordsworth is not a prophet. His sympathies, 
and homilies, and invocations, are devoted to the pan- 
theistic forms of nature, and what they suggest to his 
own soul of glory and perpetuity ; but he does not cry 
aloud to mankind like a " voice in the wilderness," that 
the way should be "made straight," that a golden age 
will come, or a better age, or that the time may come 
when "poor humanity's afflicted will" shall not struggle 
altogether in vain with ruthless destiny. His Sonnets 
in favour of the punishment of Death, chiefly on the 
ground of not venturing to meddle with an old law, are 
the tomb of his prophet-title. He is a prophet of the 
Past. His futurity is in the eternal form of things, and 
the aspiration of his own soul towards the spirit of the 
universe ; but as for the destinies of mankind, he looks 
back upon them with a sigh, and thinks that as they 
were in the beginning, so shall they be world without 
end. His " future can but be the past." He dictates, 
he does not predict : he is a teacher and a preacher in 
the highest sense, but he does not image forth the To- 
Come, nor sound the trumpet of mighty changes in the 
horizon. 

It is wonderful to see how great things are sometimes 
dependent upon small, not for their* existence, but for 
their temporary effect. Anything essentially great in 
its mentality, will be lasting when once the world ap- 
preciates it ; the period of this commencement, how- 
ever, may he retarded beyond the life of the originator, 
and perhaps far longer, merely by its being accompa- 
nied with some perfectly extraneous form or fancy 
which has caught the public ear, and caused the airy 
part to be mistaken for the substantial whole, the ex- 
crescence for the centre. Mr. Leigh Hunt was gener- 
ally very felicitous in certain words and phrases, and 
admirable for reconciling the jarring discord of evil say- 
ings and doings ; but he had half-a-dozen words and 
phrases which people " agreed to hate," and he would 



AND LEIGH HUNT. 191 

never cease to use ; and they were also provoked at his 
tendency to confuse the distinctions of sympathy and 
antipathy, by saying too much on the amiable side of 
the condemned, so that, after all, mankind seemed to 
be wrong- in definitely deciding for the right. Meta- 
physically, he may be correct; but "practice drives us 
mad." The Fish who became wiser when changed into 
a Man, and again wiser when changed into a Spirit, (^ee 
Hum's inimitable poem on the subject,) might have had 
still more knowledge to communicate if he had been 
put back once more to a Fish. Something very like 
the principle here discussed, is discoverable in Chaucer 
and Shakspeare, who usually give the bane and anti- 
dote in close relation, do justice to every one on all 
sides, and never insist upon a good thing or a bad one, 
but display an impartiality which often amounts to the 
humorous. Leigh Hunt's manner of doing this was the 
chief offence, for while the elder poets left the readers 
to their own conclusions, our author chose to take the 
case upon himself, so that he became identified with the 
provocation of those readers who were defeated of an 
expected decision. In Mr. Wordsworth's case there 
was a more deliberate and settled design in his ofi'ence. 
Subjects and characters seemed to be chosen, and en- 
tire poems written expressly with a view to provoke rid- 
icule and contempt. He wrote many poems which 
were trivial, puerile, or mere trash. Not a doubt of it. 
There stand the very poems still in his works ! Any- 
body can see them — the ungrateful monuments of a 
great poet. Weakness, reared by his own hands, and 
kept in repair to his latest day ! Let no false pen gar- 
ble these remarks, and say that the essayist calls the 
high-minded and true poet W^ordsworth bad names, and 
depreciates his genius ; let the remarks of the whole be 
fairly taken. With this peremptory claim for justice 
and fair dealing on all sides, be it stated as an opinion, 
that poems, in which, by carrying a great principle to a 
ridiculous extreme, are gravely " exalted" garden-spades, 
common streets, small celandines, waggoners, beggars, 
household common- places, and matter-of-fact details, 
finished up like Dutch pictures and forced upon the at- 
tention as pre-eminently claiming profound admiration 
or reverence — that these deliberate outrages upon true 
taste, judgment, and the ideality of poetry, cost a great 
poet twenty years of abuse and laughter — during which 



i92 WILLIAM WORDSWORTH AND LEIGH HUNT. 

period thousands of people died without knowing his 
genius, who tnight otherwise have been refined and ele- 
vated, and more " fit" to die into a higher existence. 

Now, however, all these small offences are merged 
in a public estimation, which seems likely to endure 
wih our literature-. Wordsworth is taken into the rev- 
erence of the intellect, and Leigh Hunt into the warm 
recesses of the affections. The one elevates with the 
sense of moral dignity: the other refines with a loving 
spirit, and instructs in smiles. And this is their influ- 
■ence upon the present age. 



ALFRED TENNYSON. 

** A hauntint? music, soln, perhaps, and lone 
Su)ipijrtress of tliu faery ruuf, maJe moan 
Throughout, as fearing the whole charm might fade." — Keats 

*• Nor seeks nor finds he mortal blisses, 
But feeds on the auriai k.sj^'s 
Of shapes that haunt thoughts' wildernesses. 
He will watch from dawn to gloom 
The lake-reflected sun illume 
The yellow bees in the ivy-bloom, 
Mor heed nor see what things they be ; 
But from these, create he can 
Forms more real than real man, — 
Nurslings of immortality." — Shklley. 

The poetic fire is one simple and intense element in 
human nature ; it has its source in the divine mysteries 
©f our existence ; it developes with the first abstract de- 
light of childhood, the first youthful aspiration towards 
something beyond our mortal reach ; and eventually 
becomes the master passion of those who are possess- 
ed with It in the highest degree, and the most ennobling 
and refining influence that can be exercised upon the 
passions of others. At times, and in various degrees, 
all are open lo tlie influence of the poetic element. Its 
objects are palpable to the external senses, in propor- 
tion as individual perception and sensibility have been 
habituated to contemplate them with interest and de- 
Mght ; and palpable to the imagination in proportion as 
an individual possesses this faculty, and has habituated 
it to ideal subjects and profoundly sympathetic reflec- 
tions. If there be a third condition of its presence, it 
must be that of a certain consciousness of dreamy glo- 
ries in the soul, with vague enunioiis, aimless impulses, 
and pr()j)hetic sensations, which may be said to tremble 
on the extreme verge of the fermenting source of that 
poetic fire, by whicn the life of humanity is purified and 
sidorued. The first and second of these conditions must 
be clear to all ; the last will not receive sa general an 
admission, and, perhaps, may not be so intelligible to 
everybody as could be wished. We thus ariive at the 
conclusion that the poetic element, though simple and 
R 



194 ALFRED TENNYSON. 

entire, has yet various forms and modifications of de- 
velopment according- to individual nature and circum- 
stance, and, therefore, that its loftiest or subtlest mani- 
festations are not equally apparent to the average mass 
of human intelligence. He, then, who can give a form 
and expression to these lofty or these subtle manifes- 
tations, in a way that shall be the most intelligible to 
the majority, is he who best accomplishes the mission 
of a Poet. We are about to claim for Alfred Tennyson 
— living as he is, and solely on account of what he has 
already accomplished — the title of a true poet of the 
highest class of genius, and one whose writings may be 
considered as peculiarly hjcid to all competent under- 
standings that have cultivated a love for poetry. 

It may fairly be assumed that the position of Alfred 
Tennyson, as a poet of fine genius, is now thoroughly 
established in the minds of all sincere and qualified 
lovers of the higher classes of poetry in this country. 
But what is his position in the public mind ] Or, rath- 
er, to what extent is he known to the great mass of 
general readers? Choice and limited is the audience, 
■we apprehend, to whom this favoured son of Apollo 
pours forth his melodious song. It is true, however, 
that the public is •' a rising man" in its gradual appreci- 
ation, perhaps, of every genius of the present time ; and 
certainly this appreciation is really on the rise with re- 
spect to the poetry of Tennyson. It is only some thir- 
teen years since he published his first volume, and if it 
require all this time for " the best judges" to discover 
his existence, and determine " in one way, and the oth- 
er," upon some of his most original features, the public 
may be excused for not knowing more about his poems 
than they do at present. That they desire to know 
more is apparent from many circumstances, and part- 
ly from the fact of the last edition of his works, in two 
volumes, having been disposed of in a few months. 
Probably the edition was not large ; such, however, is 
the result after thirteen years. 

The ni me of Alfred Tennyson is pressing slowly, 
calmly, but surely, — with certain recognition but no 
loud shouts of greeting, — from the lips of the discerners 
of i)oets, of whom there remain a few, even in the cast- 
iron ages, along the lips of the less informed public, " to 
its own place" in the stony house of names. That it 
is the name of a true poet, the drowsy public exerts it- 



ALFRED TENNYSON. 195 

self to acknowledge ; testifying with a heavy lifting of 
the eyelid, to its consciousness of a new light in one of 
the nearer sconces. This poet's public is certainly 
awake to him, although you would not think so. And 
this public's poet, standing upon the recognition of his 
own genius, begins to feel the ground firm beneath his 
feet, after no worse persecution than is comprised in 
those charges of affectation, quaintness, and manner- 
ism, which were bleated down the ranks of the inno- 
cent " sillie" critics as they went one after another to 
water. Let the toleration be chronicled to the honor 
of England.* And who knows "? — There may be hope 
from this, and a few similar instances of misprision of 
the high treason of poetry, that our country may con- 
clude her grand experience of a succession of poetical 
writers unequalled in the modern world, by learning 
some ages hence to know a poet when she sees one. 
Certainly if we looked only to the peculiar genius of 
Tennyson, with the eyes of our forefathers, and some 
others rather nearer to our own day, we should find it 
absolutely worthy of being either starved or stoned, or, 
as Shelley said of Keats, "hooted into the grave." 

A very striking remark was made in the Times, (De- 
cember 26th, 1842), with reference to the fate and prog- 
ress of true poets in the mind of the public. Alluding 
to " the noble fragment of ' Hyperion,' " the writer says, 
" Strange as it may appear, it is no less certain that the 
half-finished works of this young, miseducated, and un- 
ripe genius, have had the greatest influence on that 
which is now the popular poetry. In the eyes of the 
* young England' of poets, as in those of Shelley — 

'The soul of Adonais, like a »tar, 
Beacons from the abode where the immortals are.' 

" What a text," pursues the same writer, " for a dis- 
sertation on the mutability of popular taste !" True in- 
deed ; but we must not be tempted into it at present. 
Objecting to the expressions of " miseducated" and 
" unripe," as only applicable to the errors in " Endy- 
mion" and his earlier poems ; and to " half-finished" as 
only applicable (we believe this is correct ?) to " Hy- 
perion," there can be no sort of doubt of the influence. 
But there is this peculiarity attached to it, one which 

* One exception, at least, should be noticed. In 1833 a philosophical crit 
icism appeared on Tennysoii, in the '• Monthly Repository,'' written by W. J 
Fox, which unhesitatingly recognized his genius. 



196 ALFRED TENNYSON. 

Stands alone in the history, certainly of all moral influ- 
ences. It is, that he has not had a single mechanical 
imitator. There is an excellent reason for this. A me- 
chanical imitation of style, or by choice of similar sub- 
jects, would not bear ajiy resemblance to Keats ; no 
one would recognise the intended imitation. When 
somebody expressed his surprise to Shelley, that Keats, 
who was not very conversant with the Greek language, 
could write so finely and classically of their gods and 
goddesses, Shelley replied " He was a Greek." We may 
also refer to what Landor has said of him, in the paper 
headed with that gentleman's name, in a former part of 
this present work. The writings of Keats are saturated 
and instinct with the purest inspiration of poetry ; his 
mythology is full of ideal passion ; his divinities are 
drawn as from "the life," nay, from their niner and es- 
sential life ; his enchantments and his " faery land" are 
exactly like the most lovely and truthful records of one 
who has been a dweller among them and a participator 
in their mysteries ; and his descriptions of pastoral 
scenery are often as natural and simple as they are 
romantic, and tinged all over with ideal beauty. Ad- 
mitting all the faults, errors in taste, and want of de- 
sign in his earliest works, but laying our hands with 
full faith upon his "Lamia," "Isabella," "The Eve of 
St. Agnes," the four " Odes" in the same collection, 
and the fragment of" H3^perion," we unhesitatingly say 
that there is no poet, ancient or modern, upon whom 
the title of " Divine" can be more appropriately con- 
ferred than upon Keats. While the " Satanic School" 
was in its glory, it is no great wonder that Wordsworth 
should have been a constant laughing-stock, and Keats 
an object for contemptuous dismissal to the tomb. It 
must, however, be added that the marked neglect of 
the public towards the latter has continued down to the 
present day. The pure Greek wine of Keats has been 
set aside for the thin gruel of Kirk White. But if there 
be faith in the pure Ideal, and in the progress of intelli- 
gence and refinement, the ultimate recognition of Keats 
by the public will certainly follow that of the "fit auli- 
ence" which he will ever continue to possess. Of all 
the numerous imitators of Lord Byron, not one now re- 
mains. And this may be mentioned as a quiet com- 
mentary upon his supercilious fling at the superior ge- 
nius of John Keats. 



ALFRED TENNYSON. 197 

How it should happen that the influencer of so many- 
spirits of the present time should himself have been left 
to the ecstatic sohtude of his own charmed shores and 
"faery lands forlorn," while those very spirits have 
each mid all of them made some passage for them- 
selves into the public mind, is one of those problems 
which neither the common fate of originators, the ob- 
duracy or caprice of the public, the clinging poison of 
bygone malice and depreciation, nor the v/ant of suf- 
cient introduction and championship on the part of 
jiving appreciators, can furnish a perfectly satisfac- 
tory solution. Sucli, hov/ever, is the fact at this very 
time. 

We have said that Keats has had no imitators ; of 
■what nature, then, has been his influence upon the po- 
etry of the present day? It has been spiritual in its 
ideality ; it has been classical in its revivification of the 
forms and images of the antique, which he inspired with 
a new soul; it has been romantic in its spells, and 
dreams, and legendary associations ; and it has been 
pastoral in its fresh gatherings from the wild forests and 
fields, and as little as possible from the garden, a,nd 
2iever from the hot-house and the flower-shows. His 
imagination identified itself with the essences of things, 
poetical in themselves, and he acted as the interpreter 
of all this, by words which eminentlj^^ possess the pre- 
rogative of expressive form and colour, and have a 
sense of their own by which to make themselves un- 
derstood. Who shall imitate these peculiarities of ge- 
nius ? It is not possible. But kindred spirits will al- 
ways recognize the voice from other spheres, v/ill hail 
the "vision and the faculty divine," come from whom 
it may, will have their own inherent impulses quicken- 
ed to look into their own hearts, and abroad upon na- 
ture and mankind, and to work out the purposes of 
their souls. 

How much of the peculiar genius of Keats is visible 
in Alfred Tennyson, must have been apparent to all 
those who are familiar with their writings ; and yet it 
is equally certain that Tennyson, so far from being an 
imitator of any one, is undoubtedly one of the most 
original poets that ever lived. Wordsworth has had 
many imitators, some of whom have been tolerably suc- 
cessful, especially in simplicitjr. They thought /./laf. was 
the grand secret. A few who had genuine ideas have 
R2 



198 ALFRED TENNYSON. 

been more worthy followers of the great poet of pro- 
found sentiment. Tennyson has also had followers; 
but only such as have felt his spirit, nor is he likely to 
have any mere imitators, for the dainty trivialities and 
mannerism of his early productions have been aban- 
doned, and now let those imitate who can. They must 
have some fine poetical elements of their own in order 
to be at all successful. 

if a matter-of-fact philosopher, who prided himself 
upon the hardness of his head, and an exclusive faculty 
of understanding actual things, were to apply to us for 
the signification of the word " Poetry," we could not do 
belter than thrust into his hand, widely opened for the 
expected brick, one of Alfred Tennyson's volumes. 
His poetry is poetry in the intense sense, and admits 
of no equivocal definitions. The hard-headed realist 
might perhaps accept Macaulay's "Lays of Ancient 
Rome," as good martial music, (with the help of a lit- 
tle prompting from a friend of some imagination,) or 
Mr. Henry Taylor's "Philip van Artevelde" as excel- 
lent steady thinking ; or a considerable portion even of 
Wordsworth's works as sound good sense, though in 
verse, (a great admission) ; but if he did not understand 
Tennyson's poems to be " Poetry," he would not he 
very likely to misunderstand them for anything else. 
The essence and element of them are poetry. The 
poetry of the matter strikes through the manner. The 
Art stands up in his poems, self-proclaimed, and not as 
any mere modification of thought and language, but the 
operation of a separate and definite power in the human 
faculties. A similar observation attaches itself to the 
poetry of Shelley, to the later productions of Keats, to 
certain poems of Coleridge. But Tennyson and Shel- 
ley, more particularly, walk in the common daylight in 
their "singing clothes;" they are silver-voiced when 
they ask for salt, and say " Good-morrow to you" in a 
cadence. They each have a poetical dialect ; not such 
a one as Wordsworth deprecated when he overthrew 
a system ; not a conventional poetical idiom, but the 
very reverse of it — each poet fashioning his phrases 
upon his own individuality ; and speaking as if he were 
making a language then, for the first time, under those 
* purple eyes' of the muse, which tinted every syllable 
as it was uttered, with a separate benediction. 

Perhaps the first spell cast by Mr. Tennyson, the 



ALFRED TEXNYSOX. 199 

master of many spells, he cast upon tlie ear. His 
power as a lyrical versifier is remarkable. The meas- 
ures flow softly or roll nobly to his pen ; as well one as 
the other. He can gather up his strength, like a ser- 
pent, in the gleaming coil of a line ; or dart it out 
straight and free. Nay, he will write you a poem with 
nothing in it except music, and as if its music were 
everything, it shall charm your soul. Be this said, not 
in reproach, — but in honour of him and of the English 
language, for the learned sweetness of his numbers. 
The Italian lyrists may take counsel, or at once enjoy, 

' Where Claribel low lieth.' 

But if sweetness of melody, and richness of harmony 
be the most exquisitely sensuous of Tennyson's char- 
acteristics, he is no less able to "pipe to the spirit dit- 
ties of no tone," for certainly his works are equally 
characterized by their thoughtful grace, depth of senti- 
ment, and ideal beauty. And he not only has the most 
musical words at his command (without having recourse 
to exotic terminologies), but he possesses the power of 
conveying a sense of colour, and a precision of outline 
by means of words, to an extraordinary degree. In 
music and colour he was equalled by Shelley, but in 
form, clearly defined, with no apparent effort, and no 
harsh shades or lines, Tennyson stands unrivalled. 

His ideality is both adornative and creative, although 
up to this period it is ostensibly rather the former than 
the latter. His ideal faculty is either satisfied with an 
exquisitely delicate Arabesque painting, or clears the 
ground before him so as to melt and disperse all other 
objects into a suitable atmosphere, or aerial perspec- 
tive, while he takes horse on a passionate impulse, as 
in some of his ballads which seem to have been panted 
through without a single pause. This is the case in 
" Oriana," in " Locksley Hall," in " The Sisters," &c. 
Or, at other times, selecting some ancient theme, he 
stands collected and self-contained, and rolls out with 
an impressive sense of dignity, orb after orb of that 
grand melancholy music of blank verse which leaves 
long vibrations in the reader's memory; as in " Ulysses," 
the divine ''(Enone," or the '• Morte D'Arthur." The 
idea of the death, or fading away of Fairy-land, allegor- 
ically conveyed in the latter poem, is apparently the 
main basis of the design, and probably original ; but it 



200 ALFRED TENNYSON. 

is observable that Tennyson scarcely ever invents any 
elaborate design of moving characters. The two other 
poems just named, with the " Lord of Burleigh," " Lady 
Clare," "Dora," " Godiva," and most of those which 
contain liuman character in a progressive story, are 
taken from various sources; but they are taken by a 
master hand, and infused with new life and beauty, 
new thought and emotion. The same pecuUarity as to 
ground-plot is observable in Shakspeare and Chaucer, 
who never invented their subjects or stories ; but filled 
them up as nobody else ever had done, or could do. It 
was exactly the converse with Scott, who invented 
nearly all his stories, but borrowed materials to fill them 
up from all possible sources. Tennyson does not ap- 
pear to possess much inventive construction. He has 
burnt his epic, or this would have settled the question. 
We would almost venture to predict that he will never 
write another ; nor a five-act tragedy, nor a long heroic 
poem. "Why should he 1 

Alfred Tennyson may be considered,generally under 
four different aspects, — developed separately or in col- 
lective harmony, according to the nature of his subject 
• — that is to say, as a poet of fairy-land and enchant- 
ment ; as a poet of profound sentiment in the aflfections 
(as Wordsworth is of the intellect and moral feelings) ; 
as a painter of pastoral nature ; and as the delineator 
and representer of tragic emotions, chiefly with refer- 
ence to one particular passion. 

With regard to the first of these aspects of his genius, 
it may be admitted at the outset that Tennyson is not 
the portrayer of individual, nor of active practical char- 
acter. His characters, with few exceptions, are gener- 
alizations, or refined abstractions, clearly developing 
certain thoughts, feelings, and forms, and bringing them 
home to all competent S3^mpathies. This is almost ex- 
clusively the case in the first volume, published in 
1830. Those critics, therefore, who have seized upon 
the poet's early loves — his Claribels, Lilians, Adelines, 
Madelines — and comparing them with real women, and 
the lady-loves of the actual world, have declared that 
they were not natural beings of flesh and blood, have 
tried theui by a false standard. They do not belong to 
the flesh-and -blood class. There is no such substance 
in them. They are creatures of the elements of poetry. 
And, for that reason, they have a sensuous life of their 



ALFRED TENNYSON. 201 

own ; as far removed from ordinary bodily condition as 
from pure spirit. They are transcendentalisms of the 
senses ; examples of the Homeric eidula, or rather — if 
WG may venture to trace the genealogical history of 
such fragile creatures — the descendcints of those ecdoy'ka, 
as modified by the influence of the romantic ages. 
Standing or seated, flying or floating, laughing or weep- 
ing, sighing or singing, pouting or kissing, they are love- 
ly underbodies, which no German critic would for a 
moment hesitate to take to his visionary arms ; but we 
are such a people for " beef.'' We cry aloud for soul — 
we want more soul — we want to be inspired — and the 
instant anything is floated before our ken which might 
serve as an aerial guide to the Elysian Valley, or the 
Temple of the Spirit, then we instantly begin to utter 
the war-cry of "dreamy folly!" "mystical mystery!'' 
and urged by the faiih (the beef) that is in us, continue 
our lowing for the calf, that surely cometh. but cannot 
satisfy our better cravings. 

Continuing our inquiries into the fruits of Tennyson's 
early excursions in dream-land, we perceive that he 
was inclined, even when upon commoner ground, 4o ac- 
cept the fantasy of things for the things themselves. 
His Muse was his own Lady of Shalott, — she was met- 
amorphosed into the Merman and the Mermaid, and re- 
uniting at the bottom of the sea, lay swelling with the 
sense of ages beneath enormous growths upon the sur- 
face, in the form of the Kraken. Why this latter poem 
should have been omitted in the present collection puz- 
zles and annoys us as much as his insertion of " the 
Goose," and one or two other such things. But nothing 
in this class of subjects is more remarkable than the 
power he possesses of communicating to simple inci- 
dents and objects of reality, a preternatural spirit as 
part of the enchantment of the scene. Of this kmd, in 
the dim and desolate chamber of the moated grange, 
where Mariana, in the anguish of mingled hope and de- 
spair, moaned away her dreary life — of this kind, to her 
morbid fancy, was the blue fly that " sung i' the pane ;" 
and the mouse that " behmd the mouldering wainscot 
shrieked." We have heard it asked — as such questions 
always are asked by numbers— what more there waa 
in this than the mere details of a description of squalid- 
ness and desertion ? The best answer was recently 
made by * * * " Why," said he, " don't you know that 



S02 ALFRED TENNYSON. 

this ghastly fly had been bred of a corpse — and knew 
it 1 As for the mouse, it had clearly been the poor 
stai-ved niece of a witch, and the witch had murdered 
her, her soul passing into the body of a mouse by rea- 
son of foul relationship." This, at least, was accepting 
a suggestion at full. In such a spirit of imaginative 
promptitude and coincidence should such things be read, 
or nothing will come of the reading. 

" Old faces glimnier'd through the doors, 
Old footsteps trod the upper floors, 
Old voices called her from without I" 

But since " the low sky raining" in the autumn eve, 
"when the white-robed dying form of the Lady of Shalott 
floated in the boat towards the many-towered palaces 
of the Knights, a marked change has come over the ge- 
nius of this poet with regard to his female characters. 
Instead of the scions of the fairy race, most of whom 
seem to have been the poet's " cousin" — a consanguin- 
ity which evidently haunts him — we had in the volume 
of 1832, some equally beautiful women, such as the 
" Miller's Daughter," " Margaret," and the proud " Lady 
Clara Vere de Vere ;" while in the volume last given 
to the public, there are several more, and not a single 
additional sylph. Here we find him not only awake to 
the actual world, but awake with a set of totally new 
experiences. In no writer is the calm intensity of pure 
.affection, both in its extreme tenderness and continuity, 
more exquisitely portrayed than in the poems of the 
" Miller's Daughter," •• Dora," and the " Gardener's 
Daughter." Tliey are steeped in the very sweetest 
fountains of tlie human heart. 

In the description of pastoral nature in England, no 
one has ever surpassed Tennyson. The union of fidel- 
ity to nature and extreme beauty is scarcely to be found 
in an equal degree in any other writer. There may 
sometimes be a tone of colour, and the sense of a sus- 
tained warmth in the temperature, which is rather Ital- 
ian ; and this is a peculiarity of our poets, who invariably 
evade notice or consciousness of the four seasons in 
each day, which is a characteristic of our climate. The 
version which all English poets give of " Spring," more 
especially, is directly at variance with what everybody 
feels and knows of that bitter season in this country. 
But allowing for this determination to make the best of 
what we have, no poet more closely adheres to nature. 



ALFRED TENNYSON. 203 

He is generally as sweet, and fresh, and faithful in his 
drawing and colouring of a landscape, as the prose 
pastorals of Miss Mitford, which is saying the utmost 
we can for a possessor of those qualifications. But be- 
sides this, Tennyson idealises, as a poet should, wher- 
ever his subject needs it — not so much as Shelley and 
Keats, but as much as the occasion will bear, without 
undue preponderance, or interfering with the harmony 
of his general design. His landscapes often have the 
truthful ideality ofClaude, combined with the refined 
reality of Calcott, or the homely richness of Gainsbor- 
ough. The landscape painting of Keats was more like 
the back grounds of Titian and Annibal Carracci ; as 
that of Shelley often resembled the pictures of Turner. 
We think the extraordniary power of language in Shel- 
ley sometimes even accomplished, not only the wild 
brilliancy of colouring, but the apparently impossible ef- 
fect, by words, of the wonderful aerial perspective of 
Turner — as where he speaks of the loftiest star of heaven 
"pinnacled dim in the intense inane." But with Ten- 
nyson there is no tendency to inventiveness in his de- 
scriptions of scenery ; he contents himself with the 
loveliness of the truth seen through the medium of such 
emotion as belongs to the subject he has in hand. But 
as these emotions are often of profound passion, senti- 
ment, reflection, or tenderness, it may well be conceived 
that his painting is of that kind which is least common 
in art. The opening of " CEnone" is a good example, 
and is a fine prelude to love's delirium, which follows it. 

" There lies a vale in Ida, lovelier 
Than all the valleys of Ionian hills. 
The swimming vapour slopes athwart the glen, 
Puts forth an arm and creeps from pine to pine, 
And loiters, slowly drawn. On either hand 
The lawns and meadow-ledges midway down 
Hang rich in flowers, and far below them roars 
The long brook falling thro' the clov'n ravine 
In cataract after cataract to the sea." 

If Alfred Tennyson became awake to the actual world 
in his second volume of 1832, his publication in 1843 
showed him more completely so ; awake after the storm, 
after the wrecks, the deepest experiences of life. In 
the ten years' interval he has known and suffered. So 
far from any of his private personal feelings being pa- 
raded before the public, either directly, or by means of 
characters which everybody shall recognize as identical. 



204 ALFRED TENNYSON. 

after the fashion of Lord Byron, there is a withdrawal 
from every identification, and generally a veil of ideality 
cast over the whole. Certainly Tennyson is not at all 
draniatic. That he can be intensely tragic, in pure emo- 
tion and deep passion of expression, we shall presently 
show ; that he has great power of concentration, will be 
equally apparent ; and that in his powerful monodrama 
of " St. Simeon Stylites," and in the various imagina- 
tive or fanciful personages he introduces, he presents 
full evidence of the faculty of self absorption in the iden- 
tity of other idiosyncrasies, wo think also to be incon- 
testable. Still, he only selects a peculiar class of char- 
acters — those in whom it shall not be requisite to dis- 
possess himself of beauty (Stylites being the only ex- 
ception) ; nor can he speak without singing. His style 
of blank verse is elegiac, epic, heroic,' or suited to the 
idyl ; and not at all dramatic. His characters, as we 
have said before, are generalizations or abstractions ; 
they pass before the imagination, and often into the very 
centre of the heart and all its emotions ; they do not 
stand forth conspicuous in bone or muscle, nor in solid- 
ity, nor roundness, nor substantial identity. They have 
no little incidental touches of character, and we should 
not know them if we met them out of his poetry. They 
do not ent and drink, and sneeze. One never thought 
of that before ; and it seems an offence to hint at such 
3. thing concerning them. But besides all this, our poet 
cannot laugh outright in his verses ; not joyously, and 
with self-abandonment. His comic, grotesque, or bur- 
lesque pieces, are neither natural nor wild. They arc 
absolute failures by dint of ingenuity. His " Amphion" 
and " the Goose" have everything but that which such 
attempts most need — animal spirits. There is some- 
thing intermediate, however, which he can do, and 
which is ten thousand times more uncommon,— that of 
an harmonious blending of the poelical and familiar, so 
that the latter shall neither destroy the former, nor vex 
the taste of the reader. As an instance of this, we 
would quote " Will Waterproof's Lyrical Monologue," 
which is perfection; as also were Shelley's poelical 

*' Letter to ," and his " Julian and Maddalo." Of the 

constructive power, and the distribution of action re- 
quired in a dramatic composition, there is no need to 
speak ; but it is time to consider the tragic faculties of 
our author, and his power over the passions by descrip- 
tion. 



ALFRED TENNYSON. 205 

The frequent tendency to the development or illnstra- 
lion of tragic emotion has been less noticed than any 
other important feature of Tennyson's poetry. In liis 
first volume (1830) we find a " Dirge ;" the '"' Death of 
Love;" tlie " BaUad of Oriana ;" the "Supposed (Con- 
fession;" and "Mariana;" all of which are full of the 
emotions and thoughts which lead directly, if they do 
not involve, tragic results. The same may be said of 
the following poems in the second volume (1832) : — the 
" Lady ol' Shalott ;" " Eleanore ;" " Sappho" (called " Fa- 
tima" in the new edition !) ; " CEnone ;" the " New Year's 
Eve ;" and the " Sisters." Upon this last-named poem 
we will venture a few remarks and suggestions. 

" The Sisters" is a ballad poem of six stanzas, each 
of only four lines, with two lines of a chorus sung by 
the changeful roaring of the wind " in turret and tree" 
— which is made to appear conscious of the passions 
that are at work. In this brief space is comprised, 
fully told, and with many suggestions beyond, a deep 
tragedy. 

The story is briefly this. A youthful earl of great 
personal attractions seduces a young lady of family, 
deserts her, and she dies. Her sister, probably an el- 
der sister, and not of equal beauty, had, apparently, 
also loved the earl. When, therefore,. she found that 
not only had her love been in vain, but her self-sacri- 
fice in favour of her sister had only led to the misery 
and degradation of the latter, she resolved on the earFs 
destruction. She exerted herself to the utmost to at- 
tract his regard ; she " hated him with the hate of hell," 
but, it is added, that she " loved his beauty passing 
well," for the earl " was fair to see." Abandoning her- 
fseif in every way to the accomplishment of her purpose, 
she finally lulled him to sleep, with his head in her lap, 
and then stabbed him " through and through." She 
composed and smoothed the curls upon " his comely 
head," admiring to see that " he looked so grand when 
he was dead;" and wrapping him in a winding-sheet, 
she carried him to his proud ancestral hall, and "laid 
him at his mother's feet." 

We have no space to enter into any psychological 
examination of the peculiar character of this sister; 
with regard, however, to her actions, the view that 
seems njost feasible, and the most poetical, if not equal- 
I3' tragic, is that she did not actually commit the self- 
S 



206 ALFRED TENNYSON. 

abandonment and murder ; but went mad on the death 
of her sister, and imagined in her delirium all that has 
been related. But " read the part" how we may, there 
never was a deeper thing told in briefer words. 

The third volume of " Tennyson's Poems," (that i-s, 
the Vol. II. of the new edition last issued), contains 
several tragic subjects. The one most penetrating to 
the heart, the most continuous, and most persevered in 
with passionate intensity, so that it becomes inerad- 
icable from the sensibility and the memory, is '' Locks- 
ley Hall." The story is very simple ; not narrative, but 
told by the soliloquy of anguish poured out by a young 
man amid the hollow weed-grown courts of a ruined 
mansion. He loved passionately ; his love was return- 
ed ; and the girl married another, — a dull, every-day 
sort of husband. The story is a familiar one in the 
world — too familiar ; but in Tennyson's hands it be- 
comes invested with yet deeper life, a vitality of hope- 
less desolation. The sufferer invoking his betrayer, 
her beauty and her falsehood, by the memory of their 
former happiness, says that such a memory is the very 
crown of sorrow : — 

" Drag thy memories, lest thou learn it, lest thy heart be put to proof, 
In the dead unhappy night, and when the rain is on the rooof. 

Like a dog he hunts in dreams, and thou art staring at the wall, 
Where the dying night-lamp flickers, and the sliadows rise and fall. 

Then a hand shall pass before thee, pointing to his drunken sleep. 
To thy widowed marriage-pillow, to the tears that thou shalt weep. 

Thou shalt hear the " Never ! never I" whispered by the phantom years,. 
And a song from out the distance, in the ringing of thine ears ; 

And an eye shall vex thee, looking ancient kindness on thy pain. 



Of similar character and depth of tone is the poem of 
" Lady Clara Vere de Vere," who impelled to suicide 
one of the victims of her heartless beauty. The long- 
drawn music of her very name is suggestive of the 
proud pedigree to which she was ready to offer up any 
sacrifice. For continuity of affectionate tenderness and 
deep pathos in the closing scene, we should mention 
"The Lord of Burleigh," and the idyl of " Dora,"— the 
style of both being studiously artless, the latter, indeed, 
having a Scriptural simplicity which presents a curious 
contrast to the poet's early manner, la the poem of 



ALFRED TENNYSON. 207 

*' Love and Duty" there is a general tone of suppressed 
•emotion, and violent effort against nature which is deep- 
ly painful. The equal tenderness and bitterness of the 
anguish renders it the more difficult to receive with that 
feeling of resignation and sense of right which one 
would wish for on such heart-breaking occasions. It is 
to be. feared that some conventionalities have been 
erected into undue tyrannies over the noblest and most 
impassioned impulses, although the poet, not choosing 
to be more explicit in his story, or its suggestions, may 
inot have intended to illustrate any such principle. The 
clear course of feeling in the two preceding poems, 
■which are equally pathetic and conclusive, will gen- 
erally be preferable even to the more intensely tragic 
emotion of this latter one. 

It remains to offer a remark on two or three other 
poems which also form the most striking features of 
the present collection. 

With respect to " CEnone," it is an exquisitely suc- 
cessful attempt of the poet to infuse his own beating 
heart's blood into the pale blind statues of the antique 
times : and loses no jot of the majesty, while the vitality 
informs the grace. It is not surpassed by anything of 
the kind in Keats, or Shelley, or Landor. The " Morte 
D'Arthur"' precisely reverses the design of the Greek 
revival ; and, with equal success, draws back the Ho- 
meric blood and spirit to inspire a romantic legend. 

Of the " Ulysses" we would say that the mild dignity 
and placid resolve — the steady wisdom after the storms 
of life, and with the prospect of future storms — the mel- 
ancholy fortitude, yet kingly resignation to his destiny 
which gives him a restless passion for wandering — the 
unaffected and unostentatious modesty and self-con- 
scious power — the long softened shadows of memory 
cast from the remote vistas of practical knowledge and 
experience, with a suffusing tone of ideality breathing 
over the whole, and giving a saddened charm even to 
the suggestion of a watery grave — all this, and much 
more, independent of the beautiful picturesqueness of 
the scenery, render the poem of " Ulysses" one of the 
most exquisite (as it has hitherto been one of the least 
noticed) poems in the language. 

It would be impossible to give that full consideration 
to the extraordinary poem of " St, Simeon Styliles," 
which as a work of genius it merits, without entering 



208 ALFRED TENNYSON. 

into complexities of the passions, mind, and human 
character, under the excitement and involuntary as v/ell 
as wilful hallucinations of fanaticism, for wtiich we 
could afford no adequate space. We must content our- 
selves with saying that it is a great and original " study." 
There are no qualities in Tennyson more character- 
istic than those of delicacy and refinement. How very 
few are the poets who could equally well have dealt with 
the dangerous loveliness of the story of " Godiva." 

" Then fled she to her inmost bower, and there 
Unclasped the wedded eagles of her belt, 
The grim Earl's gift ; but ever at a breath 
She lingered, looking like a summer moon 
Half-dipt in cloud: anon she shook her head, 
And shouered the rippled ringlets to her knee ; 
Unclad herself in haste ; adown the stair 
Stole on ; and 'like a creeping sunbeam, slid 
From pillar unto pillar, until she reached 
The gateway, &c." 

The mind which can force up a vital flower of ideal- 
ity through the heavy fermenting earth of human expe- 
riences, must have a deep intellectual root and active 
life. Among these experiences we must of course in- 
clude those inner struggles of the soul with its own 
thoughts ; dealings with the revelations that seem to 
come from other states of existence ; difficult contests 
between the mortal promptings and resistances that breed 
so many doubts and hopes, and things inscrutible ; and 
thoughts that often present themselves in appalling 
whispers, against the will and general tone and current 
of the mind. Tennyson's intellectual habit is of great 
strength ; his thoughts can grow with large progressive 
purpose either up or down, and the peculiarity is that in 
him they commonly do so to " a haunting music." No 
argument was ever conducted in verse with more ad- 
mirable power and clearness than that of the " Two 
Voices." The very poetry of it magnifies itself into a 
share of the demonstration : take away the poetry and 
the music, and you essentially diminish the logic. 

Though Tennyson often writes, or rather sings ap- 
parently from his own personality, you generally find 
that he dje^ )Q.t refer to himself, but to some imaginary 
person. He permits the reader to behold the workings 
of his individuality, only by its reliex action. He comes 
out of himself to sing a poem, and goes back again ; or 
rather sends his song out from his shadow under the 
leaf, as other nightingales do ; and refuses to be expan- 



ALFRED TENNYSON. 209 

sive to his public, opening his heart on the hinges of 
music, as other poets do. We know nothing of him ex- 
cept that he is a poet ; and this, although it is something 
to be sure of, does not help us to pronounce distinctly 
upon what may be called the mental intention of his 
poetry. 

Whatever he writes is a complete work : lie holds 
the unity of it as firmly in his hand as his (Enone's Par- 
is holds the apple — and there is nothing broken or in- 
complete in his two full volumes. His lew " fragments'" 
are entire in themselves, and suggest the remainder. 
But for all this unity of every separate poem produced 
by him, there is, or appears to be, some vacillation of 
intention, in his poetry as a mass. To any question 
upon the character of his early works, the reply rises 
obviously — they are from dream-land ; and of the ma- 
jority of those which he has since produced, the same 
answer should be returned. The exceptive instances 
are like those of one who has not long awakened from 
his Dreams. But what dreams these have been— of 
what loveliness of music, form, and colour, and what 
thoughtfulness— our foregoing remarks have very faint- 
ly expressed and declared. Jn the absence of any mark- 
ed and perceptible design in his poetical faith and pur- 
poses, Tennyson is not singular. It would be equally 
difficult to decide the same question with regard to sev- 
eral others ; nor perhaps is it necessary to be decided. 
As the matter rests in tiiis instance, we have the idea of 
a poet (his volumes in our hands) who is not in a fixed 
attitude ; not resolute as to means, not determined as 
to end — sure of his power, sure of his activity, bui not 
sure of his objects. There appears to be some want of 
the sanctification of a spiritual consistency ; or a liabil- 
ity at intervals to resign himself to the •' Lotos Eaters." 
We seem to look on while a man stands in preparation 
for some loftier course— while he tries the edge of his 
various arms and examines the wheels of his chariots, 
and meditates, full of youth and capability, down the 
long slope of glory. He constantly gives us thcTimpres- 
sion of something greater than his woi*'45i' And this 
must be his own soul. He may do greater things than 
he has yet done ; but we do not expect it. If he do no 
more, he has already done enough to deserve the lasting 
love and admiration of posterity. 

Alfred Tennyson is the son of a clergyman of Lin- 
S 2 



210 ALFIiED TENNYSON. 

colnsliire. He went through the usual routine of a Uni- 
versity education at Trinity Colleg-e, Cambridg-e. He 
has brothers and sisters living, who are all possessed of 
superior attainments. Avoidmg general society, he 
would prefer to sit up all night talking with a friend, or 
else to sit "and think alone." Beyond a very small 
circle he is never to be met. There is nothing eventful 
in his biography, of a kind which would interest the pub- 
lic ; and wishing to respect the retirement he unaftect- 
edly desires, we close the present paper. 



T. B. MACAULAY. 

" Yes, from ths records of my youthful state, 
And from the lore of bards and sages old, 
From whatsoe'er niv wakened lhou<ihts create, 

* * *"* * * * * 

Have I collected language to unfold 
Truth to my countrymen." — Siiellet. 

" Arma, virumque, (5-c." — Virgil. 

"And in triumphant ch^ir was set on high 
The ancient glorie of the Roman peers." — Spenser.. 

Thomas Babington Macaulay is the son of Zachary 
Macaiilay, well known as the friend of Wilberforce, 
and, though himself an African merchant, one of the 
most ardent abolitionists of slavery. In 1818, T. B» 
Macaulay became a member of Trinity College, Cam^ 
bridge, where he took his Bachelors degree in 1S22, 
He distinguished himself as a student, having obtained 
a scholarship, twice gained the Chancellors medal for 
English verse, and also gained the second Craven 
Scholarship, the highest honour in classics which the 
University confers. Owing to his dislike of mathemat- 
ics, he did not compete for honours at graduation, but 
nevertheless he obtained a Fellowship at the October 
competition open to graduates of Trinity, which he ap- 
pears to have resigned before his subsequent departure- 
for India. He devoted much of his time to the " Union''' 
debating Society, where he was reckoned an eloquent 
speaker. 

Mr. Macaulay studied at Lincoln's Inn, and was call- 
ed to the bar in 1826. In the same year his " Essay on 
Milton" appeared in the " Edinburgh Review :" and out 
of Lord (then Mr.) Jeffrey's admiration of that paper^ 
arose an intimate friendship. IMacaulay, visiting Scot- 
land soon afterwards, went the circuit with Mr. Jeffrey.. 
His connection with the "Edinburgh Review" has con- 
tinued at intervals ever since. 

By the Whig administration Mr. Macaulay was ap- 
pointed Conimi8sioiier of Bankrupts. He commenced 
his parliamentary career about the same period, aa^ 



212 T. B. MAC AULA Y. 

raetiiber for Colne in the Reform Parliament of 1832, 
and again for Leeds in 1834, at which time lie was sec- 
retary to the India Board. His seat was, however, 
soon relinquished, for in the same year )ie was appoint- 
ed member of the Supreme Council in Calcutta, under 
the East India Company's new charter. 

Arriving in Calcutta, in September, 1834, Mr. Mac- 
aul33^ shortly assumed an important trust in addition to 
his seat at the Council. At the request of the Gover- 
nor General, Lord William Bentinck, he became Presi- 
iient of the commission of five, appointed to frame a pe- 
nal code for India ; and the principal provisions of this 
code have been attributed to him. One of its enact- 
ments, in particular, was so unpopular among the Eng- 
lish inhabitants, as to receive the appellation of the 
" Black Act." It abolished the right of appeal from the 
Local Courts to the Supreme Court at the Presidency, 
hitherto exclusively enjoyed by Europeans, and put 
them on the same footing with natives, giving to both 
an equal right of appeal to the highest Provincial Courts. 
Inconvenience and delay of justice had been caused by 
the original practice, even when India was closed 
against Europeans in general, but such practice was 
obviously incompatible with the rights and property of 
the natives under the new system of opening the coun- 
try to general resort. This measure of equal justice, 
however, exposed iNIr. Macaulay, to whom it was uni- 
versally attributed, to outrageous personal attacks in 
letters, pamphlets, and at public meetings. 

The various reforms and changes instituted by Lord W, 
Bentinck and Lord Auckland, were advocated in general 
by Mr. Macaulay. He returned to England in 1838. 

Mr. Macaulay was elected member for Edinburgh 
on the liberal interest in . 1839 ; and being appointed 
Secretary at War, he was re-elected the following year, 
and again at the general election in 1841. No review 
of his political career is here intended ; although in re- 
lation to literature, it should be mentioned that he op- 
posed Mr. Serjeant Talfourd's Copyright Bill, and was 
the principal agent in defeating it. As a public speak- 
er, he usually displays extensive information, close 
reasoning, and eloquence ; and has recently bid fair to 
rival the greatest names among our English orators. 
His conversation in private is equally briUiant and in- 
structive. 



T. E. MACAULAY. 213 

Mr. Maoanlay may fairly be regarded as the first 
critical and historical essayist of the lime. It is not 
meant lo be inferred that there are not other writers 
who display as much understanding and research, as 
great, perhnps greater capacity of appreciating excel- 
lence, as much acuteness and humour, and a more sub- 
tle power of exciting, or of measuring, the efforts of 
the intellect and the imagination, besides possessing an 
equal mastery of language in their own peculiar style ; 
but there is no other writer who combines so large an 
amount of all those qualities, with the addition of a 
mastery of style, at once highly classical and most ex- 
tensively popular. His style is classical, because it is 
so correct ; and it is popular because it must be intel- 
ligible without effort to every educated understanding^.. 

In the examination of the " Critical and Historical 
Essay" of Mr. Macaulay, it would have been our wish, 
as the most genial and sgreeable proceeding, to com- 
mence with that unqualified adminition which so large 
a portion of his labours justly merits. But unfortu- 
nately he hns written a " Preface." It scarcely occu- 
pies two priges, yet presents a stumbling-block in our 
course ; and, in that spirit of free discussion adopted 
by Mr. Macaulay himself throughout his volumes, he 
■will pardon our stating certain objections which we 
cannot quietly overcome in our own minds. 

'• The author of these Essays is so sensible of thf^ir defects, that he hau 
repeatedly refused to let ihem appear in a form which miiiht seem to indi- 
cate that he thought them worthy of a permanent phxe in Enfili.-h liternture 
Nor would he now give his consent to the republication of pieces so imper- 
fect, if, by withholding his consent, he could make republication impossiblei 
But as they have been reprinted more than once in the United States," &.c ' 
Preface. 

This, therefore, being unfortunately the state of af- 
fairs, of course we expect to be told that tiie author 
has now carefully revised productions which he had 
been so anxious to suppress from a sense of their in- 
completeness. 

"No attempt has made to remodel any of the pieces which are contained! 
in tliese volumes. Even the criticism on Milton, which was vvntien whea 
the author was fresh from college, and which contains scarcely a paragraph 
such as his matured jiidgwrnt approves Still remains overloaded with gaudy 
and ungraceful ornament.'' — Preface. 

Nevertheless, in this condition Mr. Macaulay re- 
prints his Essays, now that, wheiher willingly or un- 
willingly, he sends them forth in the form which an- 



214 T. B. macaulay. 

thors adopt who think their works worthy of a perma- 
sient place in literature. An odd compliment, by the 
way, to the admiration expressed by Lord Jeffrey, of 
this very paper. How are we to proceed 1 The criti- 
cal author has placed all his fraternity in a very anom- 
alous, not to say rather grotesque position. For if we 
object to anything, especially in the essay on Milton, 
the author will have been before-hand with us — he knew 
aFt that himself; and if we admire anything, he may 
smile and say " Ah, I thought pretty well of it myself 
whea I was a very young man." 

But these Essays have gone forth to do their work 
la the svorld, and the Essay on Milton, among the rest, 
will exercise its appointed degree of influence; though 
it ^'contains scarcely a paragraph such as the author's 
mature judgment approves" — and, we will venture to 
add- contains certain positions which are very mis 
chlevous to the popular mind. 

We will proceed as though no Preface had been 
nvrilten. Our objections shall not meddle with the 
•style, nor do we think its redundancy of ornament so 
prominent an annoyance as the author intimates. Our 
objections are of a more serious nature; founded on 
confused views of truth and fiction, of reality and 
ideality, and leading directly to the question of wheth- 
<3r Shakspeare and Milton ought to be regarded in any 
respect as lunatics. 

" Perhaps no person can be a poet, or can ever enjoy poetry, without a 
certain unsovndntss of vmid, if anything which gives so much pleasure 
ought to be called unsoundness." — Essays, vol. i. p. 7. 

The position is guarded and qualified, in the above 
<|uotation, but presently it comes out in all its fulness. 
The author, be it understood, explains that he means 
poetr3% impassioned and imaginative poetry ; not mere 
verse-making, but poetry of the highest order. And 
^vhat the world has been hitherto accustomed to regard 
in the light of an inspiration, the essayist wishes to 
teach us to consider as the product of an unsound 
2«ind. It is even catching, and those who read may 
rave. *' The greatest of poets," he says, " has describ- 
ed it in lines which are valuable on account of the just 
notion which they convey of the art in which he ex- 
ceiled : 

" Ay iniagiKation Ijodies forth 
The forms of things unknown, the iwet's pen 
Turns them to shape, and gives to airy nothing 
A local I'.abitalion and a name " 



T. B. MACAULAY. 215 

Now all this, which so palpably implies creative pow- 
er, suggests to the essayist an unsound creator. 

" These are tlie fruits of the ' fine frenzy' which he ascribes to the poet— 
a tine t'''5nzy, doubtless, but still a frenzy. Truth, indeed, is essential t« 
poetry ; but it is the truth of madness." — Ibid. p. 8. 

Surely the youngessayist must have heard of the"nc^''- 
west madness ?" But he suffered himself to be misled 
by the imperfect comparison with the rensonings of mad 
people, "which are just; but the premises are false." 
A few lines farther on, observing how much ''a lUtle 
girl is affected by the story of poor Red Ridrng-hood" 
he adds — '• She knows that it is all false, that wolves can- 
not speak, that there are no wolves in England, Yet 
in spite of her knowledge she believes, she weeps, she 
trembles,'' &c. That is the point. There is no mad- 
ness in the matter; those who are mad, do not know 
that their premises are false. With respect to poetry, 
it is no undsoundness of mind ; but the surrendering up 
of the feelings to certain operations of the mind, — 
which happens in other things besides poetry, and jid 
one thinks of calling it madness. After this, come the? 
usual remarks about " the despotism of the imagination 
over uncultivated minds" (Greece and Rome foi in- 
stance ?) the " rude state of society," and the influence 
of poetry dwindling with the " improvements" of civil- 
isation, but " lingering longest among the peasantry." — 
all of whom are excessively addicted to Wordsworth 
and Shelley. Finally, " as the light of knowledge 
breaks in upon its exhibitions" — 

"The hues nnd lineaments of the phantoms which the poet calls ijp, 
grow fainter and fainter. We cannot unite the incompatible advantagt?s of 
reality and deception, the clear discernment of truth and the exquisite eas- 
joyment of fiction."— /Z^id. p. 9. 

As if fiction involved no truth — no realities t — as if 
there were not a larger amount of truth in fietioiij iliaa 
in any known reality. Moreover, we are told, and tro- 
ly (in the Essay on " Moore's Life of Lord ByjcMj/* 
Vol. L page 332), that " the heart of man is the p?i>T- 
ince ofpoetry, and of poetry alone." With. mad?>e5», 
therefore, at heart, as well as in the head, we ars m a 
pretty condition ! It could hardly have been on ihi^ 
account that Lord Jeffrey was so pleased with the es- 
say. Entertaining, as we do, the most unaffected t^s- 
pect for the " mature judgment" of Mr.Macaulayj ao^ & 



216 T. B. MACAULAY. 

sincere admiration of his great powers and acquire- 
ments, we must be permitted to express our regret — 
all the more strongly for that very respect and admira- 
tion — that he did not think fit to exercise theiw in re- 
vising the crude philosophy of a young gentleman 
*'.fresh from college," instead of sending it abroad to 
do its work of injurious influence upon the mind of our 
not very finely frenzied public — a pubHc of itself, by no 
means disposed to regard poets or their works with too 
much estimation, except as matter of national boast- 
ing. Once convince and fortify John Bull in the opin- 
ion that to read poetry and cultivate liis imaginative 
faculties will render him liable to aberration of mind, 
■and it is all over with him, and the poets. Ht has half 
suspected this for a long time; his unsoundnejs is al- 
ready on the other side. Or does our classic Essayist 
and right Roman lyrist make an exception in favour of 
the mental soundness of Songs of the Sword — of bards 
and readers on war-steeds — of statesmen who write 
poetry in steel helmets ? 

In the same essay we are also obliged to object to 
the remark that the Prometheus of ^Eschylus " bears 
^undoubtedly a considerable resemblance to the Satan 
vof Milton^''' because "in both we find the same impa- 
VieTice of control, the same ferocihj, the same unconquer- 
able pride." At page 348 of this volume, we also find a 
coraparison made with some of the Byronic heroes 
" who are sick of life, who are at war with society, 
who are supported in their anguish only by an uncon- 
querable pride, resembling that of Prometheus on the 
rack, or of Satan in the burning marl," &c. Here we 
find individual ambition and morbid dissatisfaction con- 
founded with the loftiest sympathies — demoniac pride 
with the pride of the Champion of Humanity. On the 
other hand, we have, elsewhere*, an equal extrava- 
gance in the way of eulogium, when the " harsh, dark 
features of the Earl of StralTord," are said to have been 
*' ennobled by their expression into more than the ina- 
jesty of an antique Jupiter,"— as though thf-re could be 
siny comparison between the finest practical head, and 
the finest ideal one. which could be fair towards either. 

Let it not be supposed, however, that we do not find 

* In the Essay on " Lord Nu?ent's Memorials of Hampden," vol. i. pp. 
450, 1, 2. where Strafford, the same more thm siiperlnimanly majestic 
jioblemaa, is fairly shown to have been an avaricious and desjwtic renegade. 



T, B. MACAULAY. 217 

much to admire in the essay on Milton — hazardous as 
such a declaration may be, after what the author has 
himself said of it. Having duly deliberated, however, 
we will venture to express great admiration of the pas- 
sages on "revolution" at pp. 39,40,41; (which we 
commend to Sir E. L. Buhver's especial attention) and 
also of the character of Cromwell, at pp. 45, 40 — which 
we commend to the especial attention of the " author- 
ity," who seems to be so short-sighted as to contem- 
plate the exclusion of all pictorial recognition of the 
Commonwealth from the new Houses of Parliament*. 

Few essays were ever sent abroad in the world aiore 
calculated to improve the public understanding, and 
direct its moral feelings aright, than those on " Moore's 
Life of Byron," " Machiavelli," aud " Boswell's Life of 
Johnson." They contain many passages of sterling 
philosophy in the analysis and elucidation of character, 
in principles and conditions of public and private mo- 
rality, and in matters of literary taste ; all of which are 
set forth with unanswerable arguments and admirable 
illustrations. Among the latter we cannot forbear no- 
ticing the equally acute and amusing remarks on the 
-hypocritical public horror at Lord Byron's separation 
from his wife, and because Edmund Kean " had dis- 
turbed the conjugal felicity of an alderman," — common 
occurrences, of which the world takes no sort of notice 
beyond the newspaper paragraphs of the day, except 
about once in seven years, and then " the public decen- 
cy requires a victim." His remarks on Dr. Johnson 
are excellent, and while they do every justice to all the 
good qualities of the "great man" of his day, will ma- 
terially assist in leading the public mind at last to per- 
ceive how constantly Dr. Johnson, in philosophy, in 
morals, and in criticism, was quite as wrong as he was 
pompous and overbearing. 

The article on Warren Hastings is a model of biog- 
raphy. It is biography of the most difficult kind ; that, 
namely, in which the character and actions of the indi- 
vidual subject caiuiot be portrayed without a compre- 
hensive history of the times in which he lived. Such 
writings are apt to be exceedingly tedious, and in fact 
to present a mixture of two styles of composition, that 
Tof the historian and that of the biographer, fitted to- 
gether as they best may be. But in the case before us, 

* February the £'i(l. 

T 



218 T. B. MACAULAY. 

while in the state of the political world, the progress 
of events, the aspects of parties, the peculiar condition 
of the great continent of India, the characteristics of 
its various races, are all presented distinctly, and held 
constantly before the mind as they in succession 
change, swell into importance, or fade into obscurity, 
in the onward march of time ; — so, with equal distinct- 
ness and constancy, is the individual Warren Hastings 
always held present to the imagination, as those events, 
and scenes, and characteristics acted upon him, or he 
acted upon them. Th€ man stands revealed in this 
clear picture of his circumstances and his actions. We 
do not require to be told what was the peculiar nature 
of his intellect, his moral perceptions, his temperament. 
These we deduce from the history; any occasional 
remark upon him in the way of metaphysical analysis 
we read as a corollary, and can only say, 'just so,' or 
' of course.' Perhaps a skilful physiognomist might 
even pronounce on the features of his face after read- 
ing the whole. With the «ame skill as that displayed 
in presenting the history of his time, the men who sur- 
rounded him are brought on the scene. 

Of the masterly essay on " Lord Bacon," we must 
content ourselves with saying that it is in itself a great 
work of harmoniously united history, biography, and 
criticism, each of the highest class, and of which there 
is not a single page without its weight and value. 

Mr. Macaulay possesses great powers of logical crit- 
icism ; a fine and manly taste and judgment ; a quick 
sense of the absurd, with an acute perception of the 
illogical; great fairness, and love of truth and justice. 
His prose is a model of style. It is sculpturesque by 
its clearness, its solidity, its simplicity, without any 
mannerism or affectation, and by its regularity. But 
this regularity is not of marble equality ; the strong and 
compacted sentences rather presenting the appearance 
of a Cyclopian wall, with the outer surface polished. 
Continually the matter is of similar character with this 
style, and a brief section contains the growth of ages. 
Many single sentences might be adduced, in which are 
compressed clearly and without crowding, the sum of 
prolonged historical records, their chief events and 
most influential men, and how the events and the men 
acted and re-acted upon each other. 

Mr. Macaulay has great and singular ability in mak- 



T. B. MACAULAY. 219 

ing difficult questions clear, and the most unpromising 
subjects amusing. A good example of this may be 
found in his review of" Southey's Colloquies on Soci- 
ety," where Macaulay displays Southey's errors and 
wrong-headedness, and what the true state of the case 
is with respect to the currency, the national debt, and 
finance, — subjects which Literature had always consid- 
ered as dry and impracticable as a rope of snnd, but 
which in Mr. Macaulay's hands become not only intel- 
ligible and instructive, but incredibly entertaining. 

Notwithstanding the many excellent remarks on 
poets and poetical productions, occurring in the course 
of his volumes — and the acuteness displayed, not only 
in what Mr. Macaulay says of the so-called " correct- 
ness " of Pope, and Addison, and Gray (as though their 
descriptions of men and external nature were not far 
less correct than those of the Elizabethan poets), but 
in the more admiring tone he occasionally takes,— it 
might still have been doubted whether a writer, in 
whom the understanding faculty predominates, would 
be able to make that degree of surrender of its power, 
which the fullest appreciation of poetry requires. He 
might fear it would argue "unsoundness." Howbeit, 
in certain remarks on Shelley, we see that he can make 
the requisite surrender to one, whose poetry, of all 
others, needs it, in order to be rightly estimated. And 
it is a part of the means of forming the best judgment 
•of poetical productions to know when, and how far 
that faculty should abandon itself^ and receive a domi- 
nant emotion as fresh material for subsequent judg- 
ment. 

The last publication of Mr. Macaulay — his " Lays of 
Ancient Rome" — may fairly be called, not an exhuma- 
tion of decayed materials, but a reproduction of classi- 
cal vitality. The only thing we might object to, is the 
style and form of his metres and rhythms, which are 
not classical, but Gothic, and often remind us of the 
"Percy Reliques." There is no attempt to imitate the 
ancient metres. Li other respects these Lays are 
Roman to the back-bone ; and where not so, they are 
Homeric. The events and subjects of the poems are 
chosen with an heroic spirit ; there is all the hard 
glitter of steel about the lines ! — their music is the 
neighing of steeds, and the tramp of armed heels ; their 
inspiration was the voice of a trumpet. 



220 T. B. MACAULAY. 



"And nearer fapt and nearer 

Doth the red whirlwind conne ; 
And louder still and still more loud, 
From underneath that rolling cloud, 
Is heard the trumpet's war-nole proud, 

The trampling, and the hum. 
And plainly and more plainly 

Now through the glonm appears, 
Far to left and far to right, 
In broken gleams of dark-blue light, 
The long array of helnnits bright. 

The long array of spears." 
***** 

" And backward now and forward 

Wavers the deep array ; 
And on the tossing sea of steel. 
To and fro the stand irds reel ; 
And the victorious trumpet peal 

Dies fitfully away." — Horatius. 



THOMAS HOOD 

AND 

THE LATE THEODORE HOOK. 

•' Or send to us 
Thy wit's great overplus : 

But teach us yet 
Wisely to husband it; 
Lest we that talent spend: 
And having once brought to an end 
That precious stock ; tlie store 
Of such a wit: the world should have no more." — Herrick. 

"Have gentility, and scorn every man!"— Ben Jonson. 

" And laughter oft is but an art 
To drown the outcry of the heart." — Hartley Coleridge. 

"Act freeli\ carelessly, and capriciously; as if our veins ran with quick- 
silver; and noi utter a phrase but what shall come forth steeped in the very 
brine of conceit, and sparkle like salt in fire." 

Ben Jonson, Cynthia's Revels. 

There are some writers, whose popularity has been 
so long established, is so well deserved, and about the 
character of whose genius there is so correct a general 
impression in the mind of the pubHc, that very little 
more need be said about them. But these are few in 
number. For, although it is not uncommon for the 
majority to be tolerably unanimous in its opinion of a 
favourite, it certainly very rarely occurs that such 
opinion is so perfectly satisfactory as to leave no op- 
portunity and no wish to offer any further comment 
upon the individual or his works. Such, however, is 
the case with regard to Thomas Hood; and almost in 
an equal degree as to the late Theodore Hook, though 
the men are very different. We shall do little more, 
therefore, than endeavour to arrange and illustrate in a 
compact form, what we believe to be the popular im- 
pressions of both. 

Mr. Hood possesses an original wealth of humour, 
invention, and an odd sort of wit that should rather 
be called whimsicality, or a faculty of the "high fan- 
tastic." Among comic writers he is one of those who 
also possess genuine pathos; it is often deep, and of 
much tenderness, occasional sweetness of expression, 
T2 



222 THOMAS HOOD AND 

and full of melancholy memories. The predominating: 
characteristics of his genius are humorous fancies 
grafted upon melancholy impressions. It is a curious 
circumstance, that in his " Whims and Oddities," of 
bygone years, the majority of them, by far, turned 
upon some painful physicality. A boy roaring under 
the rod — a luckless individual being thrown over a 
horse's head — an old man with his night-cap on fire — 
a clergyman with his wig accidentally caught off his 
head by a pitch- fork — a man pursued by a bull, — skele- 
tons, death, duels — cats with mice, dogs with kettles — 
&c. These are the kind of things (we do not recollect 
if all these are actually in his books) in which his an- 
nual presents abounded. Nobody who takes a second 
look at any of these can feel them in a very jocular 
sense. If at all considered, they cease to be pleasura- 
ble. In the very first article of liis " Magazine" recently 
published, there is a morbid energy of desolation and 
misery for the love of those things, and there is no 
story to relieve the feelings. A ghost or gitblin of any 
kind would have been a real comfort. "The Haunted 
House" is a wonderful production for its prolonged 
inspiration of wretchedness and squalid catalogue of 
ruin. Such are Hood's latent characteristics, at all 
events ; but the more obvious features are those of 
humour, and a most ingenious eccentricity. His fan- 
cies often bear an appearance of being studied, and 
seem to have arisen from the mind of a thoughtful 
humourist. Still, they are unaflTected, and like himself. 
The fertility of his wit has chiefly been displayed in 
the application of his most erratic fancies to the cur- 
rent topics of the day, its men and manners, its sayings 
and doings, its ignorances and illiberalities. Mr. Hood 
is almost exclusively known as a comic writer, and his 
"Plea of the Midsummer Fairies" is little read in com- 
parison : nevertheless, his songs and lyrical composi- 
tions have much sweetness, refinement, and tender 
melancholy. His prose and his verse equally illustrate 
his tendency to serious and pathetic writing. Though 
the touches of sadness are generally brief, and at unex- 
pected seasons, Mr. Hood has still shown himself capa- 
ble of writing a long narrative of serious interest and 
sustained purpose — carried on clear through the very 
thick of the cross-fire of puns, jokes, and extravaganzas 
■ — and convinced us that had he pleased (or had he pos- 



THE LATE THEODORE HOOK. 223 

sessed less versatility) he would have taken a perma- 
nent position among the highest class of English novel- 
ists, — if his " Tylney Hall" does not already entitle hina 
to this rank. It will be recognized as a work of genius, 
when hundreds of novels which have been popular 
since its publication, have lined trunks, and the trunks 
been burnt for fire-wood. 

Theodore Hook possessed both wit and humour, and 
told a story well. He had great graphic powers in the 
ridiculous, and a surprising readiness of invention, or 
novel application. But his wit was generally malicious, 
and his humour satirical. If he made a sharp hit at an 
individual peculiarity, ihe point generally went through 
into hnman nature. You could not help laughing, but 
were generally ashamed at yourself for having laughed. 
The objects of his satire were seldom the vices or fol- 
lies of mankind ; but generally their misfortunes, or 
manners, or unavoidable disadvantages, whether of a 
physical or intellectual kind. A poor man with his 
mutton bone, was a rich meal for his comic muse ; and 
he was convulsed at the absurdity of high principles in 
rags, or at all needy. He never made fu.n of a lord. 
He would as soon have taken the Kingof Terrors pick- 
aback, as made fun of a lord. He was at the head of 
that unfortunately large class, who think that a bril- 
liant sally of wit, or fancy, at any cost of truth or feel- 
ing, is not only the best thing in society but the best 
proof of sterling genius ; and that one of the finest tests 
of a dashing fellow of spirit is to steal clothes, i. e. not 
pay a tailor's bill ; — nor any other bill that can be help- 
ed, it might be added. iMr. Hood was a wit about town, 
and a philosopher while recovering from " the eflfects 
of last night." His writings tended to give an unfa- 
vourable view of human nature, to make one suspicious 
and scornful. On the whole, though you had .been amu- 
sed and interested as you went on, you were left un- 
comfortable, and wished you could forget what you had 
read. 

Both these writers possess very great mastery of 
comic expression, and characteristic felicity of versifi- 
cation and rhyming. In addition to this, there was a 
novel feature 'introduced by Hood in his annuals, which 
often had an extremely ludicrous effect — viz. that of 
drawing in illustration, made by one who had "the idea," 
but no knowledge or ability m drawing. Since Hood 



224 THOMAS HOOD AND 

vreally could draw, his performances in this way must 
be regarded as all the more ingenious. The most ex- 
traordinary attitudes and intentions, and the most dif- 
ficult foreshortenings, were boldly attempted after the 
fashion of a child on a slate, but with a determined, un- 
misgiving, mind's eye, and apparently the most self- 
complaisant result. They were often quite irresistible. 
It is not, at the same time, to be denied that they con- 
tinually gave you a very uncomfortable sensation. 

We could not, perhaps, convey a much better notion 
of Mr. Hook's style of writing, and of his actual habits 
of life, than in the following quotation from the Second 
Series of " Sayings and Doings : — 

•'What's the hour"?" said George. 

"Past six," answered Ills friend ; " so go : sleep oft' your sorrow , and I 
and Wilson will settle the order of the day." 

" By the way," said Georjre, " we have something particular for to-day." 

"Particular!" answered Dyson; "indeed have we — there's the Fives 
Court at one — at four the dear Countess — 'gad how she did eat, this last past 
night of her joyous life." 

" And drink too," interrupted George. 

" She never refuses R(jman punch," observed Dyson, " I never saw a freer 
creature in that line in my life ; to he sure she is dreadfully under-rated ; her 
<:ousin they say is a tallowchandler ; and, upon my life, I never sit near her 
but I fancy I smell the moulds." 

" Hang the moulds !" said George, " she is good-natured, and I like her." 

" The good nature arises from laer good set of teeth," said Dyson ; " if 
ever you want laughers, George, to make up a party, study the ivory. Be 
sure your guests have good teeth, and they'll laugh at the worst story of a 
dinner-going wit, rather than not show the ' white and even.' Never mind ; 
at four we go to the Countess, at six we try a new oft-Ieader, at seven I have 
a short call to make in the New Road, and at eight we all dine here. After 
that, trust to chance : by the way, George, before you go to bed, I'll trouble 
you to lend me a couple of hundred pounds." 

" To be sure," said George, turning to his prime minister, who wa^ wait- 
ing ; " Wilson, let Wr. Dyson have what he wants." 

"Sir," exclaimed Wilson. 

"Don't scold me, Mr. Wilson," said his master : "my friend Dyson mus?t 
oiot be refused ; so good night, most worthy Arthur." Saying which the 
master of the house retired to rest, escorted by his body-serA'ant Monsieur 
Duval. 

" Now, Wilson," said Mr. Dyson, " the money if you please, at your ear- 
liest convenience." 

" Mone3', Sir?" said Wilson. 

" Yes, money, Mr. Wilson," repeated the young worthy ; " why, you sUu-e 
as if 1 asked you to pay the national debt ; I only want you to give me two 
hundreds of pounds." 

" I could do the one as easily as the other," answered the men. 

" Why, you keep your master's purse, Mr. Wilson V 

The Man of Many Friends. 

So much for the knowledge and experience of fash- 
ionable life, its follies, extravagances, and " principles" 
of conduct. Let us turn to something more kindly 
from the pages of Hood. We can hardly do better than, 



THE LATE THEODORE HOOK. 225^ 

tnrn to the First Series of " Whims and Oddities," and 
the first thing that meets our eye, is "Moral Reflections 
on the Cross of St. Paul's :" — 

" And what is life 1 and all its ages — 

There's seven stasfes ! 
Turnham Green ! Chelsea ! Putney ! Fulham ! 
Brenlford ! and Kevv ! 
And Tooting, too ! 
And oh ! what very little nags to pull 'ena. 

Yet each would seem a horse indeed, 
If here at Paul's tip-top we'd got 'em; 
Although like Cinderella's breed, 
They're mice at bottom. 

Then let me not despise a horse. 
Though he looks small from Paul's high croas ! 
Smce he would be, — as near the sky, 
— Fourteen hands high. 

" What is this world with London in its lap ? 

Mogg's Map. 
The Thames, that ebbs and flows in its broad channel ? 

A tidy kennel. 
The bridges stretching from its banks ? 

Stone planks. 
Oh me ! hence could I read an admonition 

To mad Ambition ! 
But that he would not listen to my call, 
Though 1 should stand upon the cross, and ball T' 

Mr. Hood's sympathies are with humanity; they are 
not often genial, because of a certain grotesque sadness, 
that pervades them, but they are always kindly. He 
is liberal-minded, and of an independent spirit. His in- 
ner life is clearly displayed by his various writings. 
Mr. Hook had no sympathies with humanity for it& 
own sake, but only as developed and modified by aris- 
tocratic circumstances and fashionable tastes. He was 
devoted to splendid externals. He may be said to have 
had no inner life — except that the lofty image of a pow- 
dered footman, wiih golden aiguillettes and large white 
calves, wali<ed with a great air up and down the silent 
avenues of his soul. But the life of animal spirits. 
Hook possessed in an eminent degree. They appear- 
ed inexhaustible, and being applied as a sort of " steam" 
or laughing gas to set in motion his invention and all 
its fancies, and his surprising faculty of extemporane- 
ous song-making, it is no wonder that his company was 
so much in request, and that he was regarded as such a 
delightful time-killer and incentive to wine by the "high 
bloods of the upper circle." He made them laugh at 
good things, and forget themselves. He also made 
them drink. Thus are red herrings and anchovies used. 



226 THOMAS HOOD, ETC. 

Sad vision of a man of genius, as Hook certainly was, 
assiduously pickling his prerogative, and selling his 
birth-right for the hard and thankless servitude of pleas- 
ing idle hours and pampered vanities. The expenses, 
the debts, the secret drudgery, the splitting head-aches 
and heart's misery he incurred, in order to maintain his 
false position in these circles, are well known ; and 
furnish one more warning to men of genius and wit, of 
how dearly, how ruinously they have to pay for an in- 
vitation to a great dinner, and a smile from his Grace. 
The man of moderate means who usually dines at 
home, saves money besides his independence ; but the 
man who is always " dining out" let him look to his 
pocket, as well as his soul. 

Mr. Hood, in private, offers a marked contrast to all 
that has been said of Theodore Hook. In nothing, per- 
haps, more than in this — that Hook was " audible, and 
full of vent," and Hood is habitually retiring and silent. 
Mr. Hood was originally intended for an engraver; but 
abandoned the profession, probably because a " graver" 
could not be found. 

Mr. Hook displayed a dashing physique ; Mr. Hood 
rather resembles a gentleman of a serious turn of mind, 
who is out of health. Within this unpromising outside 
and melancholic atmosphere, lie hidden, and on the 
watch, — a genius of quaint humour, a heart of strong 
emotions, and a spirit of kindliness towards all the 
^orld. 



HARRIET MARTINEAU 



MRS. JAMESON. 

"Therefore she walks through the great city, veiled 
In virtue's adamantine eloquence, 
'Gainst scorn, and death, and pain, thus trebly mailed. 

And blending in the smiles of that defence, 
TJie serpent and the dove — Wisdom and Innocence." 

Revolt of Islam 

"A thousand winged Intelligences daily 

Shall be thy ministers. 

Thou Shalt command all Arts, 

As handmaids." — Microcosmus. 

"I meant the day-star should not brighter rise, 

Nor lend like influence from its lucent seat; 
I meant she should be courteous, facile, sweet, 

Hating that solemn vice of greatness, pride ; 
I meant each softest virtue there should meet, 

Fit in that softer bosom to reside : 
Only a learned and a manly soul 

I pariKJsed her ; that should, with even powers, 
The rock, the spindle, and the shears controul 

Of destiny, and spin her own free hours."— Ben JoNSOsr. 

Harriet Martineau, in whose powers of keen obser- 
vation, clear thought, patient study, and untiring energy, 
guided always by singleness of purpose in the pursuit 
of truth, we should naturally have found promise of a 
long career of constantly progressive intellectual la- 
bour, has been withdrawn by disabling illness from the 
active course which from her youth she had worthily 
pursued. Had it been otherwise, a review of the char- 
acter of her mind and writings must have been con- 
ducted as only an examination of one portion of their 
manifestations, and must have been prophetic as well 
as retrospective. As it is, it must bear something of 
the impress of finality. Yet, it will not be worthy of 
its subject if on that account it is tinged with regret or 
complaint. In her consistent and well-ordered mind, 
nothing akin to such a feeling has found a place. We 
did not require to be told that she has endured the or- 
deal, peculiarly hard to one of her active habits, with 



228 HARRIET MARTINEAU AND 

cheerfulness, courage, and faith in " the soul of good 
ness in things evil." The few works she has published 
since her illness have been addressed to the young, and 
written in a tone of entire sympathy with their buoyant 
life. This shows a singular freshness of spirit main- 
tained throughout the languor and suffering of the bodi- 
ly frame. The moral influence emanating from her 
sick room, and hitherto exerted over the circle of her 
friends, has by her volume of essays just published, ex- 
tended itself more widely. Of this beautiful volume we 
shall speak in its place. It is a pathetic illustration of 
the way in which 

"They also serve who only stand and wait." 

Harriet Martineau was born in the year I8C2, one of 
the youngest among a family of eight children. Her 
father was a proprietor of one of the manufactories 
in Norwich, in which place his family, originally of 
French origin, had resided since the revocation of the 
Edict of Nantes. She has herself ascribed her taste for 
literary pursuits to the extreme delicacy of her health 
in childhood; to the infirmity (deafness) with which 
she has been afflicted ever since, which without being 
so complete as to deprive her absolutely of all inter- 
course with the world, yet obliged her to seek occupa- 
tions and pleasures within herself; and to the affection 
which subsisted between her and the brother nearest 
her own age, the Rev. James Martineau, whose fine 
mind and talents are well known. The occupation of 
•writing; first begun to gratify her own taste and inclina- 
tion, became afterwards to her a source of honourable 
independence, when by one of the disasters so common 
in trade, her family became involved in misfortunes. 
She was then enabled to reverse the common lot of un- 
married daughters in such circumstances, and cease to 
be in any respects a burthen. She realized an income 
sufficient for her simple habits, but still so small as to 
enhance the integrity of the sncrifice which she made 
to principle in refusing the pension offered to her by 
Government in 1840. Her motive for refusing it, was, 
that she considered herself in the light of a political 
writer, and that the offer did not proceed from the peo- 
ple, but from the Government which did not represent 
the people. 

The list of works published by Harriet Martineau is 



MRS. JAMESON. 229 

sufficient of itself to prove her great industry and per- 
severance in a course once beffun. It will be seen 
that she pubhshed early in life, and that the series of 
her works proceeds with scarcely a break, year by 
year, onward to the period -of her illness. Full as.it is, 
It does not comprehend her numerous contributions to 
periodical literature, some of which are among the 
most *aluable of her compositions. The list is as fol- 
lows : — 

1823. — " Devotional Exercises, for the use of Young Persons." 

1824 .& 5.—" Christmas D;iy, or the Friends," a tale. " The Friends." — 
Second Pirt. 

1826.— " Principle and Practice," a tale. "The Rioters." "Addresses, 
Prayers, and Oriijiial Hvmns." 

1827.—" M:iry Campbell," a tale. "The Turn Out," a tale. 

1829. — "Sequel to Piinciple and Practice," a tale. Tracts, for Houlston. 
** My Servant Rachel," a tale. 

18.30.—" Traditions of Palestine." " The E.=sential Faith of the Universal 
Church," (Prize Essay.) " Five Years of Youth," a tale. 

1831.—" The Faitii as unfolded by miny Prophets," (Prize Essay.) 
♦'Providence as muiifested through Israel." (I'lize Essay.) 

1832, 3, & 4.—-' Illustrations of Political Economy," "Illustrations of 
Ta.vation," tales. "Poor Laws and Paupers Illustrated," tales. 

In this interval Miss Martineau went to America. 

1837. — " Society in America." 

1838.—" Retrn^p<:ct of Western Travel." " Letter to the Deaf." " How- 
to observe Morals and Manners." "The Maid of All Work," (Guide to 
Service.) "The Lady's Maid." 

1839.—" Deerhrook," a novel. "The Housemaid," (Guide to Service). 

1840.— '• The Dressmaker," with technical aid. (Guide to Trade.) " The 
Hour and the Man," a Rnmance. 

1841.— "The Playfellow,"4 vols., viz. ;—" The Settlers at Home." "The 
Peasant and the Prince." " Feats on the Fiord." " The Crofton Boys." 

From these works, the authoress would doubless, 
like all those who have published early in life, gladly 
expunge some of the earliest. Yet there is not one 
among them which is out of keeping with the rest. 
All are written with a moral aim, in some higher, in 
others lower, but always apparent; all are remarkable 
for a free, clear, and unaffected style, which in her later 
productions is admirable from its lucid distinctness and 
simple force ; and the whole taken together evince a 
continual improveability and progression, an undoubted 
sign of the possession on the part of the writer, of a 
mmd open to and earnest for truth. 

The year 1830 marks an epoch in the mind we are 
studying : the works from that period assume a higher 
tone, and have in general a higher aim. The " Tradi- 
tions of Palestine"" was a beautiful conception, executed 
in a spirit of love and poetry which throws a charm 
over its pages. The period in which Jesus Christ ful- 
U 



230 HARRIET MARTINEAU AND 

filled his mission on earth, the people among whom he 
dwelt, the scenes in which he moved, the emotions he 
awakened, the thoughts he kindled, all are portrayed 
in a series of descriptions ; while He himself (with that 
true art which has in this instance been instilled by- 
reverence) is never introduced in person. This little 
book must kindle pure and holy thoughts wherever it 
is read. . 

The three Prize Essays published in this and the fol- 
lowing year by the Association of Unitarian Dissenters, 
to which Miss Martineau belongs, display some of the 
chief powers of her mind. At this period she began 
her contributions to the " Monthly Repository ;" these 
■were sometimes original essays, tales, or poetry ; some- 
times reviews of metaphysical or theological works. 
Among the most excellent, we may notice the " Essays 
on the Art of Thinking," on the " Religion of Socrates,'* 
and " True Worshippers ;" but above all, the poem for 
the month of August, in a series by different authors, 
entitled " Songs of the Months." 

All these literary labours were coincident with the 
design which was afterwards accomplished in the " Il- 
lustrations of Political Economy." She has herself 
ascribed the original idea of this successful work to the 
reading of Mrs. Marcet's " Conversations on Political 
Economy" which made her perceive that in her own 
tales entitled the " Rioters" and " The Turn-Out," she 
had written political economy as M, Jourdain spoke 
prose, without knowing it. The question which thence 
presented itself, as to why all the doctrines of the 
science should not be equally well illustrated by fiction,, 
was followed by a resolution to risk the publication of 
her Tales. The plan had been rejected by the Society 
for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge. They could 
not see that any practical knowledge or truth was to 
be conveyed through the medium of fiction, which they 
regarded in all its forms as light reading, in direct op- 
position to weighty facts. The leading publishers, 
probably had a similar impression; and would not ac- 
cept the work. At length one was found who under- 
took the enterprise, and at the end of a month complete 
success was certain. The books were in everybody's 
hands ; the new number was watched for at the begin- 
ning of every month ; edition was called for after edi- 
ion ; translations into French and German were made ; 



MRS. JAxMESON. 231 

the reputation of Harriet Martineau as an able writer, 
was established. 

This is not the place for an examination of the doc- 
trines of political economy; nor would any such task 
be incumbent, even in a lengthened analysis of Miss 
Martineau's work. The task which she proposed to 
herself was to illustrate such parts of the fundamental 
doctrines of the science as lead to important practical 
results, adopting the doctrines as taught by the highest 
contemporary authorities. No one will deny the clear- 
ness and completeness of her illustration. Her correct 
interpretation of her authorities is questioned only on 
one point by a high authority, Mr. John Mill, in his 
review of her series. That point is her " unqualified 
condemnation of the principle of the poor-laws." " In 
this," says the reviewer, '* she is decidedly behind the 
present state of the science." What this principle has 
effected in the working, is another matter. We should, 
however, conceive on the evidence of passages in her 
work on " America," relating to the competitive system 
and its necessary results, that she has subsequently 
abandoned her former views on this subject. 

The stories, by means of which she illustrates her 
main points, are generally constructed admirably, and 
testify to a great power of invention. It was no slight 
undertaking to contrive an interesting plot bearing on 
twenty-four doctrines of political economy ; six more 
on taxation; and four more on poor-laws and paupers! 
But the majority of these stories really are interesting 
on their own account ; some of them deeply so. We 
need only instance ■' Ireland" as perhaps the finest of 
all, and add that it was worthily companioned. 

The choice of such a class of subjects gave rise to all 
manner of imputations. The " Quarterly Review," in 
especial, while enlarging on what did not appear to it 
as " feminine," certainly forgot what was gentlemanly. 
To most dispassionate inquirers, the choice will appear 
simply an evidence of the possession of a mind keenly 
ahve to perceptions of all outward things ; actively be- 
nevolent ; observant of passing events, and the wants 
and evils of the age; turning its attention, therefore, 
to studies bearing on those evils and their remedies; 
logical rather than creative; hopeful of good, therefore 
too ready at times to adopt a theory bearing a promise 
of good ; and having embraced it, clear and acute in 



232 HARRIET MARTINEAU AND 

working it out. Too unshackled in spirit, too unaffect- 
ed and simple-minded to be deterred for a moment from 
putting forth to the world that which she had con(;eived 
of truth and wisdom, by any consideration of what this 
or the other organ might decide on the subject of femi- 
nine occupations ; but that which she found to do, 
"doing it with her might." 

The work on "America," written after the tour 
which Miss Martineau made in that country, is very 
valuable, as containing an admirably written descrip- 
tion by an accurate observer, with a most candid mind 
and a thirst after the truth. At that period she was 
possessed of perfect health, and the good spirits natural 
to her were enhanced by success. The book breathes 
of cheerfulness and hopefulness. She evidently enjoy- 
ed her residence among the Americans, and she has 
dwelt on their fine institutions, their grand country, 
their many advantages, as on a favourite theme. Their 
lighter faults she has touched lightly ; their graver er- 
rors with a melancholy earnestness. " Their civiliza- 
tion and morals," says she, " fall far below their own 
principle." This is enough to say. It is better than 
contrasting them with " European morals and civiliza- 
tion." This is undoubtedly the only philosophical view 
of the matter ; and it is wiser to have faith like Harriet 
Martineau that the ideal standard set before them will 
elevate them to itself in time, than to reproach them 
with the discrepancy. It is no wonder that the subject 
is puzzling to us, who have outgrown our Institutions, 
and are obliged to maintain a continual struggle to bring 
them into something hke harmony with our morals and 
civilization. Her chapters on slavery and its aspects 
have a solemnity of reprobation. On the other hand, 
the following passage contains a view of this subject 
which other nations are too apt to forget, and is a good 
instance of that clear-sightedness and candour which 
are so characteristic of the writer : 

" The nation must not be judged of by that portion whose worldly inter- 
ests are involved in the maintenance of the anomaly ; nor yet by the eight 
hundred flourishing abolition socieiies of the north, with all the supporters 
they have in unassociated individuals. The nation must be judged of as to 
Slavery by neither of these parties ; but by the aspect of the conflict between 
them. If it be found that the five abolitionists who first met in a little chani 
ber five years ago, to measure their moral strength against this national 
enormity, have become a host beneath whose a-ssaults the vicious institutioa 
is rocking to its foundations, it is time that slavery was ceasing to be a na- 
tional reproach. Europe now owes to America the justice of regarding her 



MRS. JAMESON. 233 

as the country of abolitionism, quite as emphatically as the couatiy of sla- 
very." — Society in Jimerica, v. 3, p. 249. 

This work is as remarkable for its fearless outspoken 
tone as for its cheerful, hopeful, and candid views of 
things. Among other subjects on which the opinions 
of the writer are freely stated, is that of the condition 
of women. Miss Martiheau accuses the American Con- 
stitution of inconsistency in withholding from women 
poUiical and social equality with men. She points out 
that while it proclaims, in theory, the equal rights of all 
the human race (except the blacks), it excludes one- 
half of the human race from any political rights what- 
ever; neither providing for their independence as hold- 
ers of property, nor as controllers of legislation, although 
their uiterests are equally concerned in both with those 
of men. 

A similarity of opinion on this question is to be found 
in the writings of Mrs. Jameson. Her delightful work, 
the " Characteristics of Women," may be said to have 
derived its origin from her strong feelings concerning 
the imperfect institutions of society with regard to her 
own sex; and in her " Winter Studies and Summer 
Ramble.s in Canada," she has explicitly and in eloquent 
terms stated her dissatisfaction, though she has rather 
called upon legislators to provide a remedy than pointed 
one out herself, except in her advocacy of a more en- 
larged and more enlightened system of education. 

It is evident that these two fine-minded women have 
been led to the same opinions by totally different cir- 
cumstances, and hence they hold them "with a differ- 
ence." The calm temperament, clear intellect, and ac- 
tive energy of Harriet Martineau ensured to herself a 
fnoral independence ; the intellectual society in which 
she moved encouraged it, and her logical head set her 
to the investigation of the causes which debarred the 
generality of women from the enjoyment of the healthy 
and cheerful tone of the inner life of which she was 
conscious herself. In her writings, therefore, we find 
no complaints ; simply a recognition of existing evils, 
and an indication of their remedies. With Mrs. Jame- 
son it is different. She sees more difficulties in the 
case. She knows by experience more of the complica- 
tions, and is conscious of the mysterious links and sym- 
pathies by which the chains have been wound around 
that half of the human race to which she belongs. Her 
U2 



234 HARRIET MARTINEAU AND 

feelings have been awakened to the subject by experi- 
ence of suffering ; and looking round her, and seeing 
how widely spread such suffering is, she points to the 
iwaster passion whence she feels it springs, and to the 
evil at the root of the tree of life, with a cry for help 
which ofien sounds life a wail of despair ; 

" Strange, and passing strange," she says, " that the relation between the 
two sexes, the passion of love, in short, should not be taken into deeper 
consideration by our teachers and our legisltitors. People educate and legis- 
late as if there was no such thing in the world ; but ask tlie priest, ask the 
physician— let them reveal the amount of moral and physical results from- 
this oiie cause. * * Must love be ever treated with i)rofaneness, as a mere 
illusion ? or with coarseness, as a mere impulse 1 or with fear, as a mere 
disease 1 or with shame, as a mere weakness 1 or with levity, as a mere 
accident 1 Whereas, it is a great mystery and a great necessity, lying at the 
foundation of human existence, morality, and happiness — mysterious, uni- 
versal, inevitable as death. Why, then, should love be treated less seriously 
than death ? It is as serious a thing. ***** Death must come 
and love must come — but the state in which they find us 7 — whether blind- 
ed, astonished, and frightened, and ignorant, or, like reasonable creaturea, 
guarded, prepared, and fit to manage our own feelings ? — thin, I suppose, de- 
pends on ourselves ; and for want of such self management and self-know- » 
ledge, look at the evils that ensue! — hasty, improvident, unsuitable mar- 
riages ; repining, diseased, or vicious celibacy ; irretrievable infamy ; cureless- 
insanity : — the death that comes early, and the love that comes late, revers- 
ing the primal laws of our nature." 

Mrs. Jameson is well aware of the odium likely to 
fall upon any meddler with this subject, and thus hu- 
morously describes the danger she runs upon : 

" It is like putting one's hand into the fire, only to touch upon it ; it is the 
universal bruise, the putrifying sore, on which ) ou must not lay a finger, or 
your patient (that is, society) cries out and resists ; and, like a sick baby,, 
scratches and kicks its physician." — Mrs. Jameson's " Canada," vol. 3, p. 
12,13. 

Mrs. Jameson is an established favourite with the 
public. She is an accomplished woman, an elegant 
writer, and her refined taste and quick sensibility are 
good influences on her age. Her " Characteristics of 
"Women" contain a searching analysis of character and 
fine criticism, such as ought to place her name among: 
those of the greatest of the commentatorsof Shakspeare. 
Her exposition of the character of Cordelia is, in espe- 
cial, beautifully true ; and her perception of the intensi- 
ty, and strength, and real dignity of soul in Helena (in 
"All's Well that Ends Well"), notwithstanding that the- 
tenour of all the incidents and circumstances around 
her wound and shock, manifests the true power to look 
beyond the outward shows of things and read the heart. 
The •' Visits and Sketches at Home and Abroad" is a 
delightful book ; accomplishing that rare task of ren- 



MRS. JAMESON. 235 

dering descriptions of works of art pleasant reading in- 
stead of dull catalogues. The authoress has also pub- 
lished the "Lives of Celebrated Female Sovereigns;" 
and " Explanatory Notes to the Series of Outlines by 
Retzch," called " Retzch's Fancies." The "Diary of 
an Ennuyee" has gone through more editions than any 
of her works. It is not only a delightful book of trav- 
els, but the vivid picture of an individual mind — a per- 
sonal narrative, which is always exciting and interest- 
ing. But self-consciousness, the bane of all real emo- 
tion, is implied in the possibility of recording emotion ; 
and feeling is apt "to die, if it but look up.)n itself." 
Hence, we regard those who enrich the world's experi- 
ence by the disclosure of their own souls, to be them- 
selves the sacrifice ; for both joy and sorrow are blunt- 
ed by their own record. 

The " Deerbrook" of Harriet Martineau has not en- 
hanced the reputation of its authoress. The concep- 
tion involves a moral puzzle, which is always painful. 
Neither does the catastrophe solve the puzzle. As the 
hero is made to sacrifice love to a supposed and mis- 
taken view of duty, thus tampering with a great reality 
for the sake of a shadow, the plot ought to end in a 
tragedy, instead of in peace after a struggle. "The 
Hour and the Man," is a story of deep interest ; but fic- 
tion has done httle for it. In the form of an authentic 
memoir of its grand subject, the life and death of 
"Toussaint L'Ouverture," its effect would have been 
more powerful. Much finer than either of these works 
of fiction are the tales comprising the series called the 
" Play-fellow," published within the last two years. 
These tales, constructed simply, to suit the minds for 
which they are intended, and founded on the emotions 
and actions of children, breathe a spirit of noble forti- 
tude, endurance, energy, and self-control, which make 
them healthy reading for old and young. If they have 
a fault it is that they are rather wanting in love as an 
influence, resting more on the teachings of suffering. 
Among them all " The Crofton Boys" is our especial 
favourite. In all these works there is evinced a very 
great power of description, and frequently a quiet hu- 
mour. Harriet Martineau is never personal nor satiri- 
cal. "Life in the Sick Room" is published without a 
name; but that she is the authoress cannot be doubted 
for a moment by any one who has studied her writings, 



S36 HARRIET MARTINEAU AND 

and far less by any one who has held companionship 
with herself; for it breathes of herself in every thought 
and word, chastened, purified, and instructed by suffer- 
ing, and with eyes firmly fixed on the countenance of 
the Angel of Death, which is to her not terrible, but 
calm, in pale and solemn beauty. It would also appear, 
though no name is mentioned, that the friend to whom 
she dedicates the volume is Elizabeth B. Barret, thn el- 
egant poetess and accomplished scholar, who, like her- 
self, long immured within the four walls of her cham- 
ber, yet possesses sympathies alive to beauty and all 
fine influences, and a spirit expanding into and aspiring 
towards infinity. The holy teachings of this book are 
more touching in their wisdom than would be the words 
of one who came to us " from the dead ;" for here the 
bourne is not passed ; the words come indeed from one 
who has become accustomed to her " footing on the 
shaking plank over the deep dark river," but who is not 
too far removed from our sympathies, and has not yet 
laid aside the conditions of our common nature. 

Both these fine writers have, as we have seen, advo- 
cated a re-modelling of our institutions with regard to 
their own sex. The one represents the intellect of the 
question, the other the feeling ; one brings to it an 
acute abstract comprehension, the other all the sympa- 
thies of a woman ; one reasons from observation, the 
other from experience; one has been roused to the 
cause by general benevolence, the other, probably, by 
personal suffering. Harriet Martineau has devoted her 
powers chiefly to science, moral or political. She has 
generally written with some fixed aim, some doctrine 
to illustrate, some object to accomphsh. Mrs. Jame- 
son, on the other hand, has pursued the study of art. 
She is a fine critic, and possesses a subtle insight into 
<?haracter. We may expect many more works from 
her. To the course of Harriet Martineau we must look 
as to one nearly closed ; but close when it may, she 
has done enough to prove her possession of a mind en- 
dowed with the capability of great usefulness, which 
she has nobly applied to high purposes. She has shown 
the power of grasping a principle ; of evolving from it 
all its legitimate consequences, and of so clearly ar- 
ranging them as to present truth to the understanding 
and to the heart also by its consistency and harmony. 
Her genius is not creative ; but her works of fiction ex- 



MRS. JAMESON. 237 

hihit a rare faculty of conception, and the power of 
combining the materials collected by her accurate ob- 
servation and clear thought, so as to produce a charm 
and an interest. She is poetical, though not a poet. 
One composition, however, to which we have already 
referred, might, by itself, give her a claim to the title ; 
but, perhaps, there is no fine mind which has not in its 
time produced its one poem. We conclude with that 
poem, and we feel that in reference to her, we so con- 
clude, appropriately : — 

"song for august," 

"Beneath this starry arch, 
Nought resteth or is slill ; 
But all things hold their march 
As if by one great will. 
Moves one, move all ; 
Harli to the foot-fall ! 
On, on, for ever. 

" Yon sheaves were once but seed ; 
Will ripens into deed ; 
As cave-drops swell the streams, 
Day thoughts feed nightly dreams* 
And sorrow tracketh wrong. 
As echo follows song. 

On, on, for ever. 

" By night, like stars on high. 
The hours reveal their train ; 
They whisper and go by ; 
I never watch in vain. 
Moves one, move all ; 
Hark to the foot-fall I 
On, on, for ever. 

" Tliey pass the cradle head, 
And there a promise shed ; 
They pass the moist new grave, 
And bid rank verdure wave ; 
They bear througii every clime. 
The harvests of all time. 
On, on, for ever." 



SHERIDAN KNOWLES 



WILLIAM MACREADY. 

"Too popular is Tragic Poesy, 
Straining his tip-toes for a farthing fee. 
Painters and Poets hold your ancient right ! 
Write what you will, and write not what you might. 
Their limits be their list — their reason, will!" 

Bishop Hall's Satires. 

The Drama should be the concentrated spirit of the 
age. The Stage should be the mirror over which every 
varying emotion of the period should pass. What is 
the Spirit of an Age as regards the Drama? Certainly 
the Theatrical Spirit is the most undramatic that can 
be. Stage-plays are not of necessity Dramas, and more 
truly dramatic elements may be found in the novelist's 
works than in the theatrical writer's. The Dramatic 
Spirit of our Age, of this very year, is to be found more 
living and real in the pages of Hood, Dickens, Mrs. Gore, 
and Mrs, Trollope, than in the play-house pieces. These 
writers gather for themselves the characteristics of ex- 
istence as modified by the principles and taste of the 
age, and the latter draw from them, or from the large 
conventional storehouse of the hereditary drama their 
traditionary portraitures. 

In this portion of our subject, must we then examine 
the works of the novelists and other writers of fiction, 
rather than the stage writers 1 To be strictly logical, 
this should be the case; but as our work is historical 
as well as critical, we must adhere to the popular and 
forsake the philosophical classification. 

The visible Drama is most eminently portrayed in 
the works of Sheridan Knowles, and the acting of Wil- 
liam Macready. These two gentlemen, at all events, 
are the visible represenlers of it, and ninety-men out of 
every hundred allude to and think of them when dis- 
cussing Dramatic matters. This is reversing the rational 
state of the matter; but being so, we must endeavour 
to accommodate ourselves to it. 



SHERIDAN KNOWLES, ETC. 239" 

The only way in which Mr. Knowles personifies our 
age, is in his truly domestic feeling. The age is domes- 
tic, and so is he. Comfort — not passionate imaginings, 
— is the aim of every body, and he seeks to aid and 
gratify this love of comfort. All his dramas are domes- 
tic, and strange to say, those that should be most 
classic, or most chivalric, most above and beyond it, 
are the most imbued with this spirit. In what consists 
the interest and force of his popular play of" Virginius V 
The domestic feeling. The costume, the setting, the 
decorations are heroic. We have Roman tunics, but a 
modern English heart, — the scene is the Forum, but the 
sentiments those of the "Bedford Arms." The affec- 
tion of the father for his daughter — the pride of the 
daughter in her father, are the main principles of the 
play, and the pit and galleries and even much of the 
boxes are only perplexed with the lictors and Decemviri, 
and the strange garments of the actors. These are a 
part of the shew folks' endeavour to amuse. Is Caius 
Gracchus not heroic] — are there not very long speech- 
es about Liberty and Rome ? Undoubtedly : but still 
the whole care of Gracchus is for his family : and to 
the audience the interest is entirely domestic. 

It is the same in " William Tell ;" though hberty and 
heroism should be the prevailing subject, the interest is 
entirely domestic. For the freedom of a country, for 
the punishment of a petty-minded tyrant the auditor of 
this play but slenderly cares, — while for the security 
of Tell's family and the personal success of Tell, every 
one is anxious. This feeling, in proportion as our au- 
thor became popular, has only more visibly developed 
itself; and his later productions have manifested his 
prevailing quality more powerfully in the pure form of 
woman's characteristics. .lulia, — the Wife — the Count- 
ess Eppenstein, are fine impersonations of the affec- 
tions ; elaborated and exfoliated into all the ramifica- 
tions of womanhood. Is this assertion of his ruling 
principle stated in a spirit of detraction ? By no means : 
but only to enable us to trace the cause of Mr. Knowles' 
popularity, as far as it extends, and to show the inevi- 
table connexion the writer's genius must have with the 
Spirit of the Age. Mr. Knowles is at the head of the 
acted Dramatists of the age, assuredly not because he 
has more invention, more wit, more knowledge of hu- 
man character, or more artistical skill than many other 



240 SHERIDAN KNOVVLES 

living dramatic writers, but because his genius, for do- 
mestic interests, added to his stage influence as an ac- 
tor, has forced his talents into higher or fuller emph)y- 
ment than that of any of his compeers. He has delved 
into the human breast, and traced the secret windings 
of the affections. Limited, indeed, to the emuliims 
elicited by modern social intercourse, but still with 
genuine iruth and varied knowledge. For this he is 
greatest in dialogue scenes tliat gradually and com- 
pletely unfold a feeling. And again, this tendency of 
his genius induces him to delight in delineating the 
chara'-teristics of woman. 

He is entitled to respect inasmuch as he has risen in- 
stead of fallen with public approbation. In " Virginius," 
'• Caius Gracchus," " Tell," we see the play-wright pre- 
<3ominant. Mr Knowles, when composing these, was 
strung. ing for fame, perhaps for existence, and he was 
compellea to pass through the turnpikes that public 
taste had erected, and managers maintained. Conse- 
quently, we find all the formula of the received drama, 
— shows, battles, bustle, antiquated phraseology, vapid 
imitations of obsolete humours, and altogether a barba- 
rous medley of the traditionary and commonplace 
tricks of the theatre, introduced, first to attract mana- 
gers and through them to charm the rnidtitnde. Grad- 
ually, however, as he won his way from servitude to 
power he used his success manfully. In the " Hunch- 
back," he emancipated himself greatly from the tram- 
mels of the play-wright, and in the character of " Julia" 
gave full licenc-e to his genius to develope his intuitions 
of female nature. The plot of this play is absurd, the 
construction clumsy, the attempt to delineate human 
character in many instances feeble — the language often 
grotesque ; but it took hold of the public, it elicited 
unanimous applause, because in the woman it spoke 
the language of nature to n . nre. Herein he vijulicated 
his high calling — herein he vvas the poet. Situation — 
sentiment — circumstance — show — processions — group- 
ings — were abandoned, and human emotion finely ex- 
pressed, won, and subdued all hearts, — chastening, 
whilst interesting; instructing, while it moved. 

As an artist in dramatic composition, Mr. Knowles 
must be ranked with tlie least skilful, particularly of 
late. The comparative fiilure of his last three or four 
productions is chiefly attributable to their inefliciency 



AND WILLI MACREADY. 241 

of constrnclion, though they contain more beautiful 
poetry in detached frngments than can be found in any 
of his former works. 

So much space would not rightly have been given to 
remarks on Mr. Knov.'les, but that he speaks the pre- 
dominating feehng of the age. Were we to estimate 
him by comparison, or by analysis — by what has been, 
whafis, and what may be, he would not hold a high 
rank — so great, so vast are the capacities of the Drama. 
Placed beside Shakspeare, and the powerful- minded 
men of Elizabeth's day, he dwindles, it is true ;"* but 
placed beside the Rovves, the Southerns, the Murphys — 
he is as a man to mouthing dwarfs. But, whatever 
he may be by comparison, he is truly a poet, and as 
such should be honoured. 

But the Drama has many phases ; and being so pecu- 
liarly an imitative art, how can it be otherwise ? The 
most simple is that which reflects the tone and tem- 
perament of the age. This kind of Drama must not 
now be looked for amongst what is somewhat absurdly 
called the " legitimate." That phrase is foolishly ap- 
plied to a form — the five-act form ; and to that kind of 
Drama which includes philosophical exposition of hu- 
man character, and philosophical and rhetorical disser- 
tation upon it. But the most legitimate, because the 
genuine offspring of the age, is that Drama which 
catches the manners as they rise, and embodies the 
characteristics of the time. Triis, then, has forsaken 
the five-act form, and taken shelter at what have been 
named "IMinor Theatres," and it will be found in the 
skilful little Comedies, and bright, racy Dramas of Jer- 
rold, Planche, Bernard, Buckstone, Oxenford, Dance, 
Mark Lemon, MoncriefF, Coyne, Leman Rede, Lunn, 
Peake, Poole, and others. Few of these clever writers 
have made any pretensions, in writing for the stage, 
beyond pecuniary and fair professional motives. Mr. 
Jerrold, Mr. Oxenford, Mr. Planche, and several more, 
have various other claims in literature ; but their posi- 
tion on the stage only is here treated. They have, 
each and all (though in very d'^erent quantities), 
lavished much wit, fancy, and invt*'tion on their pro- 
ductions, doomed by the theatrical destinies to an 

* We should except the finer parts of his best dialogue?, in which he 
does not dwindle beside the Elizabethtm men, but is worth}' to stand among 
them.— Ed. 

X 



242 SHERIDAN KNOWLES 

ephemeral existence. Some of tlieir pieces have lived 
their thirty, fifty, and even hundred nights, and then 
been heard of no more. These writers have borne the 
brunt of much truculent and bombastic criticism — they 
have been miserably remunerated — and often but ill 
appreciated, though much applauded. Whoever for 
the last twenty years has spent his evenings at the 
Olympic, the Adelphj, the Haymarket, the Strand, the 
Surrey, and even the Victoria Theatres, cannot but 
recall the innumerable dramas that have risen, like 
summer clouds, evening after evening, only to be ab- 
sorbed into a night, endless in all cases, and frequently 
undeserved. How many sparkling sallies — how much 
gaiety — how many humorous characteristics — lightly 
and vividly shadowing forth our social existence, — and 
what skill in the distribution of the action and effects ! 
Could all the laughs be collected and re-uttered in a 
continuous volley, the artillery of Waterloo would be 
a trifle to it ; nor vi'ould the rain of that destructive day 
exceed the tears that have been shed at these shrines 
of the dramatic muses. Yet the authors are spoken of 
slightingly by the ponderous dispensers of fame ; and 
treated by the managers, and even the delighted public, 
as something only a few degrees above street-minstrels. 
But herein is shadowed the fate of their mighty prede- 
cessors ; and in the red-herring and rhenish banquet 
that killed Nash — in the tavern-brawling death of Mar- 
lowe — in the penury of Dekker — of W' ebster, who waS' 
a parish-clerk, — of Beaumont, and Fletcher, and the dis- 
tresses of nearly every one of the dramatists of their 
age, is to be found the symbol of the conduct which 
originality ever suffers, in the first instance. Deaths 
that might have resembled Otway's, have no doubt 
been often within an ace of occurring among many of 
his fraternity. The present race are small of stature 
when measured with their noble progenitors — not be- 
cause the present Age is so much less imaginative and 
impassioned, but because the public taste has been per- 
verted and cannot improve of itself, and because mana- 
gers, without a single exception, persist in pandering to 
that perversion, viz., addressing gaudy and expensive 
shows to the external senses. The elder dramatists 
"were scholars and immortal poets writing to and for 
enquiring and earnest-minded men. The intellectual 
wants of that age were large — their speculative facul- 



AND WILLIAM MACREADY. 243 

ties were fully developed — the grandest questions and 
the highest deeds occupied men, and the theme must 
be high and the development fine that satisfied them. 
Bacon propounded the proposition of Nature and its 
causes — Raleigh and Sydney embodied the Chivalry — 
and a Faith, burning and sincere, sought to penetrate 
the deepest recesses of man's eternal destinies. It is 
not meant to be argued that in their own day, any of 
the great men of former times, who needed bread, 
were not as liable to be half-starved as they are now; 
nor to be intimated that any such greatness exists in 
our day ; but simply, that original greatness, besides all 
the old difficuhies and neglects, has now a trading mass 
of hostile criticism against it, and that there is not the 
same enthusiasm to be half-starved as formerly. 

The poets who speak to an age must be equal to it, 
or they will not be heard ; if far beyond it they will 
not be listened to, in so far as they are beyond it. The 
elder dramatists having a ready access to the stage, 
and a cordial welcome, wrote with a full nature be- 
cause th^r audiences felt it, and were not weak and 
dainty. rChecked at every turn, our modern acted 
dramatists have for the most part sought to efifect little 
more than pastime for the hour. The difference is 
ai least as much in the times and circumstances as the 
men. 

It is not to depreciate, but to estimate, that we com- 
pare. Whatever the amount of their ability, the truly 
dramatic, as far as it exists on the modern stage at all, 
will be found in these comparatively neglected writers 
of the minor drama. This neglect may be traced to 
one special cause — they are not " literary." The lite- 
rary men were opposed to them, and so strongly was 
this felt, that one of them said to another who has sub- 
sequently become one of the most popular essayists of 
the day, " So, you have left us, and taken to literature .''' 
The Drama is so elastic as to embrace the highest 
poetry, philosophy, eloquence, wit, knowledge and learn- 
ing, as exemplified by him who was great in each and 
all. It can, however, exist without any of these quali- 
ties, and reaches in a graphic vista from " Punch" to 
^schyUis. Our modern play-wrights (as they are 
nick-named) have sought only to please, and cared not 
to exercise more labour than was absolutely necessary 
for this end. Quickness — interest — invention — skill, 



244 SHERIDAN KNOWLES 

were demanded and provided, and often wit, humour, 
fancy and pathos thrown into the bargain. 

In Jerrold's forty dramas who does not recognize an 
infinity of briUiant repartee — of fine sense and feeling? 
What a readiness in the dialogue ! — What variety of 
characteristics ! So much, that if carefully woven into 
no greater number of plays than Congreve wrote, would 
have provided a far more lasting and deserved reputa- 
tion than that licentious classic has obtained. " Doves 
in a cage," the " Wedding Gown," " Nell Gwyn," the 
" Prisoner of War," and the remainder of the long li&t, 
how abounding are they with sparkling glances and pun- 
gent satire on the humours, follies and absurdities of 
existing life ! 

Mr. Buckstone is nearly as prolific as Thomas Hey- 
wood, and almost all his pieces have been successful, 
and deservedly so ; that is, they have made hundreds 
and thousands laugh and cry, and speeded the hours of 
innumerable audiences. Quantity may not betoken 
quality, nor success merit, but still there must be, and 
there is, much of the latter in Buckstone. He i^ a trans- 
lator, a hunter up of old stories^ a retailer of old jokes, 
an adapter and stage artizan, say many. So he is ; but 
still he does all these things with talent — he excellent- 
ly adapts rather than translates — and gives new life to 
an old joke by giving it congenial characteristics. His 
hand is hard, his colouring coarse ; but still he has a 
quick eye for social absurdities, knows the pulse of an 
audience, to the finest division ; is admirable in coil 
struction, and effect, and possesses that very uncom- 
mon gift in an Englishman — a ceaseless flow of animal 
spirits, which is perhaps the main source of all his suc- 
cesses. 

Mr. Bernard, in his earlier career, dealt more in the 
sentimental ; and very delicate and high-toned were 
some of his dramas. They touched the chord of do- 
mestic feeling and rung a sharp and full vibration frorr^ 
it. " A man of Genius on his Last Legs" proved his 
rich sense of the absurd, as did many subsequent pro- 
ductions. He too is essentially of his age. 

Mr. Oxenford has mastered the art of construction, 
and can manufacture a piece for the stage as a cabinet- 
maker fashions an ingenious article. His idea of fun is 
great, and his fancy is governed by a highly culti- 
vated and instructed judgment. Invention and hu- 



AND WILLIAM ilACREADY. 



245 



mour are his, as is evident to every one who has seen 
"A Day Well Spent."* 

Mr. Planchfi, if only for the extraordinary number of 
dramas he has successfully produced, would deserve 
especial notice. Original dramas, translations, farces, 
interludes, operas, Christmas pleasantries, &c. ; he has 
contributed upwards of one hundred pieces to the stage, 
and with the exception of only three " damnations" 
they have all been successful! Mr. Planche has a vivid 
notion of manners, and depicts character as exempli- 
fied and modified by them, admirably. The fine lady 
of intrigue — the battered debauchee of rank — the man 
of pleasure — he delineates well. He has a strong feel- 
ing for, and admiration of the artificial elegancies of 
life — considerable fancy — a ready invention in charac- 
ter and situation, and great skill in new adaptations ; 
not much wit or repartee, but a genial and laughable 
humour, and the rare art of throwhig a refining atmos- 
phere round even the most unpromising subjects. He 
has the most wary, watchful, logical head in the con- 
struction! of a play, and could give instructions in this 
respect to some of the best dramatists, very much to 
their advantage. 

But we must pass on, and without particularizing the 
individual characteristics of the pens of the many 
*' ready writers" who have set in motion the various 
green-rooms. 

Dance — and Leman Rede — have each made a path 
for themselves, nor can it be doubted but they possess 
in themselves the ability to produce something very 
superior to that which circumstance and the present 
condition of the stage requires at their hands ; and 
Moncrieff only wanted to have fallen on a better age to 
have been ranked with some of the dramatists of a 
nobler era. 

But have all the play-makers and stage-feeders been 
named 1 — Not a tenth part of them. Are all of the 
same ability 1 — By no means. A catalogue as lengthy 
as that of Homer's ships might be made, though their 
freights would by no means be so weighty. Shades of 
these shadows might be found ; second, third, and 
fourth transmitters of a weak original ; combinations 
of the ferocious and the witty, and imitators and con- 

* Mr. Oxenford has also sterlins; claims in literature, were it only for his 
■finrivalled translations from Calderon. — Ed. 

X'2 



246 SHERIDAN KNOWLES 

structors so faint and poor that the art is no longer 
concealed, and the mechanism is apparent to all but the 
merest novices, or the most vapid imaginations. Sur- 
prises, rescues, and discoveries, perils, escapes, and dis- 
guises, so echoed and re-echoed that all effect is gone. 
Puns so obvious, allusions so dim, mistakes so absurd, 
disguises so thin, characteristics so exaggerated, equi- 
vokes so bald, that no reflecting mind could be enter- 
tained, or for a moment be deluded, by them. To par- 
ticularize names here would be invidious. Though all 
v'ho depress the age deserve as much castigation as 
those who by their talents raise it deserve eulogy, 
these are not of sufficient importance. Collectively, 
only, they are so. With such as we have last men- 
tioned, the drama has sunk from the educated and the 
tasteful to the uncultivated, and those of coarser pleas- 
ures, — from the refined gentleman to the intelligent tra- 
der, and from him to the small shop-keeper, the inferior 
class of operatives, the ignorant, and the degraded. 

The acted drama of our age is at the best but of a 
poor kind. It has been popular because it was small, 
and it v/as small because it merely sought popularity. 
But the great heart of the world, although it beat faint- 
ly, has not lost its vitality ; and the sympathies, capaci- 
ties, and wants of the human soul will manifest them- 
selves. Whilst the stage only sought in general to 
shadow forth the smaller peculiarities of an actual and 
every-day life domesticity, there have been men hi 
whom all the passionate energies and imaginings of 
our nature would burst forth. These men belonging to 
literature, and not to the stage, have been rightly desig- 
nated as " unacted dramatists," and the press gave to 
the world what the corrupted stages were too sunken 
in their own earthy ruins to be able to believe in, or 
even recognize as having any affinity with their own 
existence. The spirit of the drama no longer trod, but 
was trodden into "the boards," and therefore a set of 
unacted dramatists arose, and will some day be seen 
and heard. 

It has been erroneously fancied that inflated with a 
literary position and high notions, they both envied, 
and looked down upon their acted fraternity, and 
thought them mere usurpers. A greater calumny could 
not have been devised. On the contrary, the unacted 
dramatists consider those at present occupying the 



AND WILLIAM MACREADY. 247 

Stage, to be its only supporters ; so far from envying 
their position, they consider their abilities underrated, 
and not sufficiently remunerated, and in all their suc- 
cesses they sympathize and rejoice. But that in the 
pure element of dramatic composition they also consider 
themselves worthy to be " ranked with some of the 
dramatists of a nobler era," is undoubtedly true, — and 
one of them has been heard to set at nought the scoffs 
of his time, by claiming to rank, in the pure elements 
of tragedy, with the dramatists of the Greek or Khza- 
bethan ages.* How far any of those " high and re- 
mote" claims may have grounds, il is impossible to 
devote space for examination ; they are mentioned, 
however, to show at least the vitality and self-reliance 
of the dramatic spirit, and that, besides the known and 
acted men, there is a " brood" as yet beneath the earth, 
who may one day spring up like the dragon's teeth 
sown by Cadmus. 

But it has been asked by some, even in our own 
country, who, not seeing a play, are by no means sure 
of its existence — " Who are those unacted dramatists ?" 
The answer from lovers of the elder drama would be — 
" Shakspere, in respect of at least two thirds of his 
plays; and Ben Jonson, Beaumont and Fletcher, Ford, 
Webster, Marlowe, — in fact all the rest of the Eliza- 
bethan dramatists, who are absolutely unacted." Not to 
confuse the question, however, let us speak of the mod- 
ern drama as it is: — "Who then are these unacted 
dramatists V The answer must be — " Nearly all the 
best authors." The knowledge of some and the igno- 
rance of others of the dramatic art, is not, at present, 
the question ; the object is to show that all are treated 
with nearly the same exclusion; in fact, that there is 
manifestly the strongest tendency in the present age to 
be dramatic, but its chief authors have no means of 
learning the art. To go no further back than Byron, 
Southey, Shelley, Coleridge, the list includes almost 
every author eminent in works of injagination and 
invention. Even Wordsworth and Keats, — the two last 
men from whom anything in the shape of a drama could 
be expected, have written tragedies. Surely nothing can 

* Our esteemed Contributor avoids naming the Author of " Cosmo de 
Medici," and " Gregory Vtl.," for obvious reasons ; but lest some others 
misbt have to bear the odium of taking their position into their own 
hands, the offender is hereby "given up" to justice.— Ed. 



248 SHERIDAN KNOWLES 

more directly show the breadth of the external influen- 
ces of this Spirit of the Age. It has even penetrated 
to the heart of the aristocracy, as shown in the dramas 
of Lord Francis Egerton, Lord John Russell, Lord John 
Manners, Lord Beaumont, &c. ; the " Francesca di Fa- 
enza" of the latter, containing some of the finest dra- 
matic writing and situation of modern times. 

The Drama is a root; a theatrical show is a mere 
blossom. One is born of its age, the other grows 
through it, out of the past into the future. The poet 
deals with eternal nature, and the eternal effects of 
nature. The poetaster deals with the tastes of men as 
formed by circumstances, and fashioned by convention 
and association; the poet with the passions of men, 
and the qualities of things. The one is guided by mere 
association, the other by analogy.* The one by casual 
prejudices, the other by truths. The poetaster appeals 
to the pleasurable recollections and notions by associa- 
tion ; the poet extends our knowledge and experience, 
making the soul wise, because he proceeds by analogy. 
There are two kinds of dramatists. He who seeks to 
reflect back the sentiments, feelings, prejudices, and 
foibles of the day; who is at once an echo and a glass ; 
and he who, passing by these common modes of pro- 
curing success, exemplifies the human creature in all 
the various phases that its intellect, temperament, pas- 
sions, and desires produce. 

They ma}^ to a certain degree, and perhaps must be 
mingled. But it is easy to see which mode will be 
pursued by those whose sole aim is the applause of " a 
house." At the hustings, the brawling reiteration of 
catch-words must be more successful (to use the favour- 
ite and hard-ridden modern phrase), than Plato or Cole- 
ridge would have been. 

It may naturally be expected that some space should 
be devoted to tlie productions of two gentlemen who 
have written for the stage, and have attracted a large 
share of public attention by their well-merited success 
in other departments of literature, as well as law, poli- 
tics, and various valuable public services. But for 
these reasons, Mr. Serjeant Talfourd, and Sir E. L. 

*Mr. Henry Mayhevr in his " What to tench, and how to teach it," was, 
we believe, the first author who forcibly marked out and illustrated this 
important distinction and theory. We also reg-ird the treatises on the Dra- 
ma by this gentleman's brother, Mr. Edward Mayhew, as highly deserving 
of careful study. 



AND WILLIAM MACREADY. 249 

Biilwer, will receive a separate and more entire atten- 
tion than could here be given to their claims. It will 
therefore be sufficient in the present paper to say that 
Talfourd— the representative of the classical drama, as 
Sheridan Knowles is of the romantic, — did really 
" stand in the gap" during the periods when there were 
few, if any such dramas as have smce been published; 
and they jointly maintained the precarious existence 
of the English drama. Sir E. L. Bulwer, can hardly 
be considered as a dramatist, having pursued this class 
of writing, not from any strong internal gift and pre- 
dominating impulse, but rather as a man of first rate 
talent and ingenuity, who could produce any kind of 
literary article that might be in request, and having "all 
appliances and means to boot," could not very easily 
(though he has managed that, too, occasionally) do other 
than succeed. This justly admired, and far more dra- 
matic novelist, was apparently drawn to the stage by 
the ambition and excitement of a new and difficult pur- 
suit, and every facility for learning the art, and every 
theatrical assistance being sedulously afforded him, his 
versatile ability and great industry were profitably re- 
warded. Above all things, however, his exertions for 
the freedom of the stage, long since, entitle him to the 
gratitude and respect of dramatists and actors. 

Of the histrionic Art, at the head of which, in this 
country, Mr. Macready has stood of late years, by legit- 
imate succession no less than by superior attainments 
and energies, it will not be requisite to say much, nor 
of its professors, because the nature of their position 
renders their claims so well known to the public. But 
the Art and its professors become of additional impor- 
tance when it is considered that they excite the efforts 
— and to no purpose, — of all the most energetic and cre- 
ative intellects in our literature. 

While the biography and stage recollections of the 
most experienced mountebank of ihe time,* whose "ex- 
perience" has been characterized by every degree of 
well-merited failure, could only produce, at best, along 
account of trading speculations, and mechanical details, 

* Here is an instance of the power of "position" in this country, and of 
irresponsibility in a manager. A well known author of the highest abili- 
ity. — Mr. Robert Bell, a truthful historian, an elegant biographer, and a con- 
scientious critic, who is moreover universally respected and esteemed, has 
been subject to a great public injury, and, apparently, without any chaace 
of redress. 



250 SHERIDAN KXOV/LEi. 

conducted with all the arrogance of a grossly self-satis- 
fied ignorance, — it is impossible to conceive of any bi- 
ographical and professional recollections which would 
involve so large an amount of melancholy interest, to 
literary men more especially, as those of Mr. Macready. 
Nothing like sufficient space could here be given for 
such recollections as Mr. Macready's professional ca- 
reer must embody, even if we possessed the materials. 
But how many phases of them present themselves to 
the mind ^ They must tell of early studies and difficul- 
ties, of efforts and disappointments, of renewed ener- 
gies and labours, while vague aspirations and palpable 
ambitions broke through the fogs and mists of circum- 
stance, as did the dangerous vision of a crown upon 
the yet uncertain mind of Macbeth. They must tell of 
slow acquirements, slow advances, chagrins, mortifica- 
tions, exasperations, and redoubled efforts, with some 
successes, though so disproportionate to the efforts, the 
hopes, and, in many cases, to the just deserts. Gradu- 
ally they would display successes, and popular suocess- 
es, and the rank of " principal" in them, but not in the 
highest walk. Yet here would commence more com- 
pletely the consciousness of that undue position over 
the intellectual men of a country, which every very 
successful actor or actress attains, in respect of one of 
the liighest departments of literature. His recollections 
would now tell of dissatisfactions of positions, and cast 
of characters, and of nobler aims at greater excellence; 
of his attamment of the first class of characters, and 
his hard-earned successes in them, notwithstanding the 
ail-but eclipsing and overwhelming genius, energy, and. 
unequalled popularity of Kean ; — of tormenting strug- 
gles of rivalry, and to maintain his position ; of his 
gradual security, and, by degrees, of his fortitude, tem- 
perance, and unconquerable perseverance, bringing him 
his reward as sole possessor of the tragic throne, from 
which, step by step, with staggering power, his meteoric 
sword fading from his hand — his inspiration now bor- 
dering upon delirium — the intemperate, heart-desolate 
wreck of Edmund Kean, with hands still grappling the 
shape-thronged air, reeled away half unconsciously in- 
to the darkness. 

Mr. Macready wrs now admissibly tlie first living 
tragedian ; and if the anxiety of authors to obtain his as- 
sistance in the production of their pieces upon the stage 



AND WILLIAM MACREADY. 251 

had previously been great, it was now immensely in- 
creased ; and their overtures, and flatteries, and ded- 
ications, were enough to have turned the head of most 
men into that hallucinatory condition of mind, in which 
most potentates necessarily exist. Yet such is the con- 
tradictory nature of circumstances, and of theatrical cir- 
cumstances above nearly all others, and such the pre- 
dominating power of external position in this country, 
above every kind of internal individual capacity, that 
at this time Mr. IMacready's position being that of an 
actor under that of a manager, it signified nothing that 
he was immeasurably superior, in himself, and m every 
attainment, — he was nevertheless subject to the gross- 
est ill-treatment and insult from one of the lowest. 
How that unbearable condition of things terminated, is 
well known ; and how universally did Mr. Macready 
carry with him the sympathy and approval of all edu- 
cated men, and of all true lovers of the Drama, of com- 
mon justice, and common decency, must be equally 
fresh in the memory of the public. There was no 
other alternative, and Macready became a Manager. 

It is not requisite to dwell upon this gentleman's 
great successes in what he sought to effect, as matter 
of taste in the "getting up" of dramas; nor upon his 
repeated failure, as matter of pecuniary speculation. 
His influence upon the national intellect as a manager, 
must, however, come under discussion, together with, 
a view of managerial influence, generally, whether in 
this, or any other country. Nor can we do better than 
quote a {e\v remarks on the rise of the drama in Spain, 
— for though they a.re applied to the neglect experienced 
by Cervantes, the pith of the whole question will be 
seen to be one and the same. 

"If the only thing requisite in order to originate, to revive, to reform, orto 
re-create the drama of a civilized country, was dramatic genius; if to }M)s- 
sess the faculty and execute the work as matter of literary composition, 
vi'ere all that was needed to produce the effect or commence its develop- 
ment, — then perhaps might the name of Cervantes have Blood parallel in 
Spain with the highest names of our dramatists of the age of Elizabeth. 
But between original dramatic genius, and its desired attempts, there come 
•three powerful intermediates, any one of which may prevent the very 
chance of fair trial, or any trial at all,— these are the public tastes of the 
day, influence of capital (or the want of it), and the individual capacities 
and characters — in fact the private tastes of managers of theatres. The pub- 
lic taste may be good or vicious, its reception of new things is always a 
doubtful matter; capital is rarely, if ever, embarked upon a new thing of 
ideal pretensions; and to say that a particular novelty of any kind would 
be to the interest of a manager to produce, might be true, or imtrue, — that is 
not the question, but what he itiinks, and chooses to do ; and whether he 



252 SHERIDAN KxNOWLES 

be very wise or veiy ignorant, he has hitherto been ' the law/ as to what 
genius or talent should make its appeal to the public through the medium 
of the stage."* 

Apart from all other considerations, that a public pro- 
'fessing to understand, and certainly having so universal 
an admiration of Shakspere, should not have sufficient- 
ly patronized a manager who displayed so much anx- 
iety to produce his plays under the name of " revivals," 
with a prodigality of scenic illustrations and supernu- 
merary appointments, all excellent, expensive, appro- 
priate, and skilfully applied — but that, on the contrary, 
the public should in very few instances be found suf- 
ficientl}' numerous (as the paying portion of the audi- 
ence) to half-fill the theatre afier the excitement of the 
first three or four nights, so that eventually the accom- 
plished and indefatigable manager is obliged to go to 
America to recover his health and retrieve his damaged 
fortunes, — would appear to be one of the most inexpli- 
cable problems of modern times, if not one of its deep- 
est disgraces. Still, there must be some solution to 
this ? Perhaps the public may ncU, after all, be so 
perverse as appears 1 The truth is so important to all 
the interests of dramatic literature and the stage, that, 
if it can be discovered, some hope of a remedy and a 
a new and prosperous course might perhaps be des- 
cried. A few opinions and suggestions shall therefore 
be offered in these concluding pages. 

Whatever troubles, pertinacities, and weari.some ap- 
plications Mr. Macready may have experienced from 
the authors of dramas previous to his becoming a man- 
ager, it cannot be doubted but that they must have mul- 
tiplied prodigiously afterwards. The most improbable 
plots, or the most inextricable non-constructions, with 
characters at once monstrous and imbecile, outrageous 
and inconsequential, are forwarded to managers by 
hundreds every season, from the pens of educated, half 
educated, and totally uneducated men, — without the 
ability to put two acts, or perhaps two scenes, together 
with consecutive action and direct purpose ; without 
an idea of consistency in any one character; without 
the least prevision of effects upon an audience; with a 
total disregard of what is convenient or impossible in 
in the nature and sequence of scenery; yet each one 
believing that his play is, of all others, the most eligible 

* Essay on "The Dramatic Mind of Europe," by R. H. Home. 



AND WILLIAM MACREADY. 253 

to the manager, and — if the notion of a " cast" occurs 
at all — the most eligible for the talents of the given 
company. The fate of all these pieces may be antici- 
pated. Bnt there is another class of men, who at in- 
tervals of from one to three years, transmit dramatic 
productions to, managers. These authors are not 
numerous ; some of them are known in the literary 
world, some not. They are, for the most part, solitary 
students of nature and the passions, of philosophy, of 
literature, and of art; they have worked secretly for 
years, and the midnight lamp and the shadow on the 
wall have been sole witnesses of their toils, tiieir en- 
thusiasms, and their aspiring dreams. Straitened in 
means, no doubt, they usually are, so that at last the 
time which they have given to preparing themselves to 
be worthy of some honour, needs a little remuneration. 
And these men are treated precisely with the same re- 
jection and neglect as those previously described. So 
certainly as they have suffered themselves to be deluded 
by the compliments and exhortations to publish their 
tragedies or plays, and to renew their efforts in the 
same class of composition, so certainly have they been 
injured in the worst way ; their tim.e, their energies, 
an.d their health wasted, and in cases where the im- 
pulse was too strong to be checked, and they have had 
no private resources, they have been ruined. That the 
dramas they forwarded to managements were unskilful 
in some respects, dangerous in others, and wanting 
practical assistance in many, cannot adn)it of a doubt; 
but it is questionable if they were more unskilful, dan- 
gerous, or wanting, than those accepted and acted pro- 
ductions which, with every assistance from managers 
and actors, have proved ruinous to all parties. 

Abundant examples might be adduced to prove this. 
Perhaps the two most striking would be those of " Mar- 
tinuzzi" and " Plighted Troth" — the first produced un- 
der the auspices of unexperienced amateurs and con- 
flicting practical opinions; the other produced by a 
most experienced management, and all governed by 
one head. It may be said that Mr. Macready did not 
incur a loss exceeding five or six hundred pounds by 
the disastrous failure of " Plighted Troth," whereas tlie 
chivalrous experiment of Mr. Stephens cost him per- 
haps, in all, more than double that sum. Yet that was 
caused by his own will, — his resolve not to be con- 



254 SHERIDAN KNOWLES 

quered, but to play a five-act tragedy in defiance of an 
absurd law, and of the friends of the old managerial 
system ; and this he did during upwards of twenty 
nights. " Plighted Troth," be it admitted, contained, 
as well as " Martinuzzi," several scenes of true dramat- 
ic genius ; it was the bad judgment of all parties that 
made them both look so preposterous. 

But if the unacted Drama be held in no regard by 
theatrical people, it is not much more esteemed by the 
majority of the public press. The slightest acted piece 
often has a long notice ; whereas, of an unacted trage- 
dy or comedy anything, or nothing, may be said, — and 
any thing with impunity.* 

" But the Unacted, and consequently the unaided Drama, has at length 
made some progress ; under every disadvantage, with every thing in its dis- 
favour, it has made its way against its well-provided opponent. The Acted 
Drama, with all the aid of numerous actors, beautiful paintings, charming 
music — with all the dazzling fascinations that belong to public shows — with 
fashion, custom, and hereditary predilection in its favour, — has dwindled 
and degenerated, until the voice of criticism, of the Dramatists themselves, 
and of the intellectual part of the public, have declared it inferior in men- 
tal power to the Unacted; — have declared that, with all the facilities that 
practice can give, with all the means that experience and knowledge can 
afford, it is more essentially deficient in the true elements of dramatic pow- 
er, than the Unacted. The Unacted Drama may have awkwardnesses, in- 
congruities, and even absurdities, from its not having the advantages of ex- 
perience and practical exercise. But that it is great in conception, power- 
ful in expression, strong in criginality, and vigorous from its tVeshness, is 
allowed. It has again dired to step within the terrific circle of the pas- 
sions, and to show in appalling strife those never-dying elements of human- 
ity."! 

What with the claims of the able and the incompetent, 
the reasonable and the unreasonable, the men of genius 
and talent with a definite aim, and the men of self-de- 
lusion and a puzzled will, — the logical heads and the 
half insane, the sound advice of one friend, the flatter- 
ing advice of another, and the retreating opinion cf all, 
as the manager himself began to come to a decision — 
Mr. Macready must have had a most feverish seat of 
power, and a most troublesome and thankless reign. 
The bad success here which caused him to make a trip 
to America, has very possibly been the saving of his 

* A professional critic, in a fit of frank cordiality, once told a certain un- 
acted dramatist, that he had written disparagingly of his tragedy from a 
prejudice he had conceived against him on account of his superabundant" 
whiskers — and he regretted it. The offending hair had since been cut ofl^ 
and he was reconciled. It never struck this critic that the use of a public 
organ for any trivial private prejudice or purpose, was a startling confession ! 

t Lecture on the " Relative Value of the Acted and the Unacted Drama,'* 
by F. G. Tomlins, Secretary to the Shakspcre Society, &.c. 



AND WILLIAM MACREADY. 255 

life and health, and may be regarded as a gratulatory 
result by everybody, since everybody must look for- 
ward with interest to his career, which will probably be 
renewed in this country by fresh " revivals" of Shaks- 
pere in one of the smaller theatres. So placed, with a 
less lavish expenditure in gorgeous redundancies and 
real upholstery, and wisely confining himself to the old 
established stock pieces, he would most probably be 
very successful; and that he would be most deservedly 
so, there can hardly exist a doubt. But he should care- 
fully avoid all new pieces, and all pretence of encour- 
aging living dramatists ; first, because, instructed by 
long experience, he must have found that it is his des- 
tiny to select mediocrity or failure ; and secondly, 
because he will thus cease to excite the efforts and 
occupy the time of men of intellect, to no purpose. 

Mr. Macready's merits as an actor are far greater 
than his defects ; let us therefore contemplate the for- 
mer, chiefly. He is the first artist on the stage. On 
all those innumerable points of art connected with the 
stage, which he has studied from his youth, there is no 
one who possesses more knowledge or skill in their 
application ; and no one possesses both in an equal de- 
gree. He is rarely " at home" in anything new, either 
of principle or practice, without long study, if then. 
His conception is slow, and by degrees ; nor does it 
ever attain beyond a certain point. That point is the 
extremity of all that his study and practice can discov- 
er and embody ; and it is very much. He has no reve- 
lations of genius, no inspirations except those which 
are unconsciously "given off" at times from great 
physical energies. If he had any such revelations, he 
would adopt them doubtfully, and partially, and so de- 
feat their essential meaning. But when he does em- 
brace the whole of a character (such as William Tell, 
Coriolanus, lago. Cardinal Wolsey, King John,) he 
leaves little undone, and all the rest to admire, in the 
highest degree. He dresses to perfection. He is the 
only man on the stage who seems to have a fine eye 
for true harmony of colour. Sometimes he has allow- 
ed splendid dresses to be destroyed by an equally 
splendid back-ground of similar colour, but never when 
he himself is in front of it. If he wore but a blanket, 
he would have a back-ground that should make that 
blanket the most gracious object the eye could rest 



256 SHERIDAN KNOWLES. 

upon — perhaps the focus of all attraction. He reads 
poetry very badly, as to rhythm — broken up — without 
melody — harsh — unmusical — shattered prose ; and yet 
he speaks with exquisite distinctness, and very impres- 
sively, because he is thoroughly in earnest. There 
is great finish in all he does — a definite aim, clearly 
worked out — and those who find little to admire in his 
acting, the fault is in them. 

As a manager he has unexampled merits in his at- 
tempt to separate the theatres from their long-estab- 
lished union with bare-faced licentiousness. It is to 
his great and lasting honour that he is the first manager 
who seems ever to have felt that Art has nothing in 
common with " the town." Great merit is also due to 
him for his indefatigable industry and attention to all 
the business of the theatre. One instance of his 
thoughtful care, though to the outside of the walls, 
should be noticed : he successfully defeated the bru- 
tality which characterizes an English audience in entering 
the pit on crowded nights ; and the public, especially the 
female portion, should be grateful for so needful an 
attention. His exertions to improve the stage arrange- 
ments and appointments, are well known ; they ex- 
tended from broad effects down to the minutest details, 
— perhaps the former were sometimes injured by the 
latter. He made the supernumeraries act — a mortal 
labour. He not only multiplied the brood of these 
"turkeys," but he crammed them, and made men and 
women of them. It has been currently reported — prob- 
ably on no better grounds than because he does not 
sing the drinking song of lago — that Mr. Macready 
does not understand, or care for music. This can 
hardly be true : he has introduced music amidst the 
Shaksperean dialogue, and at "times and seasons" in a 
far more poetical way than any other manager. He 
has applied fine scenery and dioramic efll'ects to Shaks- 
pere more appropriately to the sense of the words, 
than were ever done before ; but as to the eflfect upon 
the action (excepting in the Chronicle plays where the 
want of action might justify extraneous aid,) and as to 
the effect upon the poetry, in all cases, there can be no 
doubt that both are injured by the predominating, and 
sometimes overwhelming effect upon the external 
senses — not intended by the poet. As a manager of 
business, and in all agreements and pecuniary dealings^ 



AND WILLIAM MACREADY. 257 

Mr. Macready has always been liberal, generous, tho- 
roughly to be relied upon, and of unimpeachable integ- 
rity. 

But the merits of an individual, as an actor or mana- 
ger, or both, however great and meritorious, must 
necessarily be a small matter in themselves compared 
with their influence and effect upon one of the highest 
departments of the literature of a great nation. This, 
on the whole, in Mr. Macready's case, may be pro- 
nounced as good — an aggregate advantage, though bad 
in its individual instances. Good, inasmuch as it has 
largely assisted in stirring up the dramatic Spirit of the 
country ; bad, inasmuch as, vi'ith some three or four 
exceptions, it has led to nothing but labour in vain. 
He has advised or exhorted nearly every author who 
sent him a drama of any pretensions, to publish it — 
and write another, — write another by all means — that 
he could do the thing if he would, — why did he nof? 
&c. Mr. Macready, throughout his whole career, has 
produced on the stage no great or standard work of 
dramatic genius ; or, if " Ion" and " Virginius" be re- 
garded as exceptions, who will name a third ? — and he 
has wasted the time of more men of genius and talent 
than any other individual on record. 

Mr. Macready shares a part of the latter accusation 
with high authorities for precedent. Even Garrick did 
not produce on the stage any new^ stock tragedy of the 
first class ; nor did the Kemble family, nor did Edmund 
Kean. These facts seem to lead to the conclusion that 
managers and actors, when unassisted by established 
reputations, have no taste for anything beyond second 
and third-rate plays. It is in vain to say they could 
find no better than they produced. Too truly they 
could not. No one finds 'that which he has no soul to 
search for, or no eye to perceive. The great discove- 
ries in the physical v/orld by men of science were nor 
their inventions ; the things were there before the}' 
searched. They discovered the things they sought, 
because they knew them when they saw them; and 
the powers of nature are not limited to any particular 
age. The " mighty dead'' are not mighty because they 
are dead—though it would seem that so many people 
think so. They were once alive, and laughed at. 

Mr. Macready's character (we deal only with such 
elements of it as are directly or indirectly of public 
Y 2 



258 SHERIDAN KNOWLES. 

influence.) is made up of stronger opposites than is 
usual, however common those antagonisms are in for- 
cible characters. He has great energies of action, and 
a morbid will. He has a limited imagination, with a 
large ambition. His imagination is slow and dull of 
vision, but quick and sensitive to feel. It, therefore, 
continually misleads him beyond retreat. For this 
reason, his hasty judgments are always wrong, and his 
slow judgments futile from exhausted impulses. In 
these respects he has been much assisted by Mr. Serle. 
It is evidently the opinion of this gentleman that a cold 
dispassionate judgment is the only popular test of ex- 
cited imnginations. His advice, therefore, is always 
judicious, and ineffectual. But it is quite a mistake to 
suppose that Mr. Macready is misled by the advice of 
friends. We are aware that Mr. Forster and Mr. Serle 
have been commonly accused of this; but we think 
very unjustly. Mr. Macready takes no advice but that 
which backs his own opinion. His constant errors in 
judgment show that they proceed from the same man. 
His spirit is a hot-headed steed, capable of leaping great 
conclusions; but he wants faith in those things, and in 
himself, which would enable him to succeed greatly ; 
and when he does leap, he makes up for a long arrear 
of doubts by wilfulness, and ''falls on the other side." 
He has genial feelings, but a morbid fancy which 
troubles them. It pains him to laugh. His tempera- 
ment is impetuous, his hopes dreary, his purposes high- 
minded, his opinions conflicting, and " his luck against 
him," with his own assistance. He boldly incurred the 
odium of allowing Anti-Corn-law meetings in Covent 
Garden, besides giving an arm-sweeping slash at recent 
taxations in a farewell address; and he made a speech 
to the poor Duke of Cambridge, on receiving a " testi- 
monial," at which all his best friends blushed, and he 
himself, before the farce was concluded, which had 
cost so much pains to get up, wished a large trap-door 
would unbolt itself beneath his feet. As a patron of 
modern dramatic literature, he has been totally mis- 
taken by others, and the less he ever attempts of this 
kind in future, the better for all parties. As a supporter 
of the Shaksperean drama, and all the fine old "stock 
pieces," he has not been encournged according to his 
deserts; and, with all his faults, the want of sufficient 
patronage in his own country, is discreditable to the age.. 



AND WILLIAM MAC HEADY. 25^ 

Few men ever had the sympathies of the public more 
completely in their power than Sheridan Knowles, 
Scarcely any imprudence or deficiency that he could be 
guilty of, in a new play, would cause the audience to> 
damn it, though they might not go again to see it. With 
Macready the case is ditferent. He always has enemies 
in the "house," and a large party, or parties, against 
him out of the " house." Some for one thing, some for 
another, abstract or personal, private or public. Strong 
and unfailing friends he also has, and they form a party^ 
though comparatively a small one, and rapidly decreasing. 
Like all very anxious men, Mr. Macready, besides his 
bad judgment, is unlucky ; and Mr. Knowles, like all 
careless men, is usually hi good luck, notwithstanding 
his equal deficiency in judgment. The one "darkens 
averse" at all critical strictures, the other calls every 
critic he meets " my dear boy." Mr. Macready has had^ 
however, to endure many ill-natured and personal re- 
marks and insinuations from various parties — some who 
were, and others who thought they were aggrieved by 
him ; and, on the other hand, he has had the advantage 
of more assistance, systematic and instant to his need, 
from the public press, than almost any other individual 
of his day. If those who have publicly uttered anony- 
mous complaints against him were known, with all their 
affnirs in relation to him, there would be a better means 
of judging the case among all parties ; and, on the other 
hand, if his public applauders and supporters were knowjij. 
with all their aflfairs in relation to him, there would be a 
better means of judging among all parties. As it is, all 
the parties must " fret it out," till, sooner or later, a 
change comes over the whole scene— some grand gen- 
eral explosion takes place — the atmosphere clears, and 
a fair, open field for dramatists may then give ihem Ihe 
means of proving their existence. 

vSo great are the difficulties attending five-act pieces,, 
either tragedies, comedies, or plays, that there is no in^ 
stance of a successful author in them, throughout our 
literature of the present day. No, there is not one. 
Shall we mention Mr. Sheridan Knowles^ who has writ- 
ten three or four times as many five-act pieces as any 
other author, all of which have been acted 1 What i» 
his success? One tragedy, scarcely ever played now ;: 
and two comedies. His last four dramas have beea 
dead failures, notwithstanding their fine detached scenes^. 



2C>0 SHERIDAN KNOWLES 

dialogues, and genuine poetry. Shall we name Sir E. 
L. Bulwer? With all the professional friendship and 
assistance he has had from Mr. Macready and others, 
and notwithstanding his great ingenuity, and tact, and 
versatile skill, his dramatic list presents marked failures, 
with two exceptions, only one of which is now acted. 
Mr. Serjeant Talfourd's success rests upon one tragedy, 
seldom acted. As for the many great " discoveries" of 
Mr. Macready, they have vanished for ever. We allude 
to such equivocal tragedies as " Mary Stewart," " PHgiit- 
ed Troth," the much-puffed •' Gisippus !" &c., &c. There 
has never been in our own times one successful acted 
dramatist of the higher class. Yet some of these wri- 
ters (as well as others less known, or not known at all) 
are probably able to achieve many successes, could the'y 
have practically mastered their art. To do this there 
is no opportunity. The difficulties of the art are not 
greater than the difficulty of obtaining any sufficient 
means of study and experiment. The man who has 
succeeded most profitably, is the one who has had most 
of these means and " appliances." 

There are no doubt a dozen good collateral causes 
for the decline of the acted drama; but those at the 
root of the matter are simply these — that the actors, 
who never did, and never can, originate or contribute to, 
a Dramatic Literature, have got the exclusive power of 
the stage ; — that authors of genius have no free access 
to the stage for the production of pieces that originate 
in their oum strongest impulses ; — and that nearly all 
critical literature is arrayed against them by reason of 
the total disbelief in their practicable existence, or the 
possible composition of actable dramas which are not 
seen. We need seek no more causes than these. There 
is a body without a soul ; and the body has got the visi- 
ble position. 

The Drama (meaning its literature,) like the Age, has 
been at the lowest, and both are manifestly rising to a 
purer taste. Whether the circumstances of modern 
society and civilization are eventful enough to give new 
incidents to the Drama, may be doubted. If not, it 
must and will, in future, take a more imaginative and 
philosophical tone. 

A visible Drama more nearly allied to the universal 
genius of the age must arise now that physical re- 
straints are removed hy the late legislation. The new 



AND WILLIAM MACREADY. 261 

order of dramatists, both acted and unacted, only await 
the man, come when he may, who, having the material 
means in his power, shall mould a form congenial to 
the present spirit of the age ; and this once done, the 
abundant existing dramatic genius will gather round it, 
and the Drama again become popular. It will of course 
be understood, that no removal of legal restrictions, nor 
any other outward circumstances can bring about a new 
dramatic period, unless dramatists have a ready access 
to theatres, and the services of the best actors. With- 
out these, any possible number of the most genuine 
dramatists would not be of the least avail. They would 
be like disembodied souls ; or like a waggon load of gold 
on the wrong side of a turnpike, where gold was not 
recognized. 

But with these necessary aids, a Drama will agaio 
be created. Theories that have long oppressed it, 
circumstances that have stunted and destroyed it, 
are rapidly passing away. The hope that external cir- 
cumstances could re-ignite it. must now be for ever 
abandoned. Actor and actress, manager and mounte- 
bank, bandmaster and speculator, one after another, 
fail to do so ; and the hope of their being ever able to 
effect a revival of the Drama, or a dramatic success of 
any kind, — the most pertinacious of those fallacies 
clung to by those who call themselves " the practical 
men," — is now utterly extinguished. The utmost that 
Garrick effected — perhaps the most generally accom- 
plished and versatile actor that ever lived — was merely 
to make the theatre fashionable, and '• a rage." If it 
be true that he also improved or even created a better 
taste, he did nothing to produce or aid the creation of the 
thing tasted. It was there before him. The same may 
be said of the Kembles ; and of Edmund Kean. Much, 
more has been aimed at by Mr. Macready, but not with, 
much better success. Shakspere improved the Drama 
of his time, and created fresh dramas. Aw actor can 
only improve or injure taste. Mr. Macready has done 
both — improved taste in poetical scenery, and the "get- 
ting up," and injured it in almost confirming the taste 
for expensive upholstery and display. The imagination. 
of creative dramatists can alone call forth any new 
spirit and form of Drama. The most profuse and ad- 
mirable external aids can only foster mediocrity, and 
are so far detrimental because they dazzle and mislead 



262 SHERIDAN KNOWLES 

the public judginent till it cannot distinguish the essen- 
tial from the extraneous. 

That the good management of a theatre requires the 
power to be vested in one man. is no doubt true ; and 
perhaps — when we look at the discordant and conflict- 
ing talents, vanities, and interests, all in vigorous mo- 
tion — his power should be almost despotic. But how 
far it is good for such management to be vested in a 
prmcipal actor, in full possession of his acting faculties, 
is another question. Instead of enlarging the sphere 
of the drama, he is sure to narrow it to his own exclu- 
sive standard. Instead of rendering it miiversal, he 
will make it particular. Instead of a reflexion of hu- 
manity, it will become the pampered image of an indi- 
vidual. " I cannot see myselfin this part," is a favour- 
ite expression of Mr. Farren's when he does not like a 
new play ; and may be taken as a general characteris- 
tic of all the "■'' stars." The stars, however, are disap- 
pearing, and with them the long suite of their retain- 
ers, the scenery-mongers, decorators, restorers, tailors, 
antiquarians, upholsterers, who have had their day. 
Capitalists have backed them with unbounded wealth ; 
experience has lent them all her aid; trickery all her 
cunning ; puffery all her placards, bills, paragraphs, and 
the getting up of " stories ;" the press all its hundred 
tongues, telling of their nightly doings — besides the 
special tongues in cases where a public organ has been 
a private engine — and what has been the result 1 Bank- 
ruptcies, failures, dispersions, flights, half-salaries, no 
salaries, farewell dinners, debts, prisons, — and fresh 
candidates for the fatal seat. The fresh candidate, who 
in most cases is a fine old hand at a failure, usually 
finds a fresh capitalist to back him. " He is a man of 
such practical experience!" says the capitalist. Moon- 
calf! of lohat is his experience ? Are not the practical 
results of all his eff'orts precisely of a kind to make ev- 
ery capitalist in his rational senses, start back from his 
disastrous *' experience V But there is also another 
peculiarity attached to a managerial lease-holder. He 
pays people if he can ; if he cannot, he laughs in their 
faces. Anybody else would be arrested, or knocked 
down, or something. He stands in a sporting attitude ; 
and nothing happens to him ! Every now and then, 
when a dashing speculating sort of " man about town" 
finds himself totally without money, and does not know 



AND WILLIAM MACREADY. 263 

what in tlie world to do next; he says to liiraself, — 
" Damme ! I'll take a theatre !" Very likely he will 
find backers with money as soon as he has taken it; in 
any case, the proprietors are all too happy to let him 
the house. He invariably fails. Some are paid, many 
not. Who cares? That dashing speculator is not a 
scamp, "bless your heart!" — but an excellent good fel- 
low. He has such enterprise in him ! — such experi- 
ence ! "Why, the impudent rogue absolutely risked 
nothing — he had nothing to risk. Oh, but he has such 
enterprise ! And thus with two unexamined catch- 
words — enterprise and experience — the proprietors of 
theatres, and the poor mooncalf capitalist, delude and 
injure themselves and the public. 

How totally inapplicable to Mr. Macready must be 
any of the preceding remarks, with reference to pecu- 
niary dealings, need not be repeated ; it is the more to 
be regretted 'that the system he pursued of profuse 
expenditure upon extrinsic adornments, was of a kind 
which never can prove successful, and which, for his 
sake, as well as that of the poetry of the Drama, we 
most earnestly trust he will never repeat. 

During periods when the Drama and the stage have 
been almost at the last ebb, it should be recollected 
that Sheridan Knowles and Mr. Macready have contin- 
ually exerted themselves to open new springs, or recal 
the retiring waters. If in vain, their indefatigable en- 
ergies are at least worthy of admiration. Both have 
now been before the public these twenty-five or thirty 
years, and have well earned the estimation they have 
obtained. Mr. Knowles commenced his career as an 
actor, but has some time since abandoned it. He is 
still in vigorous life, and full of excellent spirits — poeti- 
cal, convivial, and Hibernian. In private he is a prodi- 
gious favourite with all who know him ; frank, burly, 
smiling, offhand, voluble, and saying whatever comes 
uppermost ; with a large heart beating under a great 
broad and deep chest, not easily accessible to care or 
trouble, but constitutionally jovial and happy. Mr. 
Macready in private is good-natured, easy, unaffected, 
without the least attempt at display, extremely gentle- 
man-like, habitually grave, and constitutionally satur- 
nine. His smile is melancholy, and his expression is 
occasionally of great kindness. He speaks little ; with 
frequent hesitation, but well: with good sense, and 



264 SHERIDAN KNOWLES, ETC. 

enlarged and benevolent sympathies, moral and politi- 
cal. His views of art are confused between the real 
and ideal. Mr. Knovvles occasionally delivers Lec- 
tures on the Drama, which are conspicuous for no 
philosophy or art, and an abundance of good humour 
and the warmest admiration of his favourite authors. 



MISS E. B. BARRETT 

AND 

MRS. NORTON. 

Flower of the Soul ! emblem of sentient Thoughts, 
With prayer on prayer to chorded harps ascending, 
Till at the clouded I'ortals, humbly bending, 

They, like the holy martyrs' pale coli6rts. 

Wait solemnly — while sounds of dew descending 

Their presence recognise, approve, and bless ; — 

Flower ! shedding fragrance from a dark recess, 

Thy roots lie passive on tliis mortal soil ; 

Thy beauty blooms on high— serene beyond our coil !" 

" As one v.'ho drinks from a charmed cup 

Of foaming and sparkling and murmuring wine. 
Which a mighty Enchantress, filling up. 
Invites to love with her lips divine." — Shelley. 

" Tliy Mind shines through thee like a radiant sun, 
Although thy body be a beauteous cloud." 

Beaumont and Fletcher. 

It is anything but handsome towards those who were 
'Criticised, or fair towards the adventurous critic, to re- 
gard, as some have done, the article on " Modern Eng- 
lish Poetesses," which appeared a few years ago in the 
*' Quarterly Review," as a tribute merely of admiration. 
It was a tribute of justice ; and hardly that, because 
nine ladies were reviewed, of very different kind and 
degree of merit, all in the same article. Eight were al- 
lowed to wear their laurels ; the ninth fell a victim. 
Passing over the victim, who shall be nameless, we 
will say, that the poetical genius, the impassioned fer- 
vour, the knowledge of genuine nature and of society, 
of books, of languages, of all that is implied by the term 
of accomplishment, and, "though last, not least," the 
highly cultivated talent in the poetic art, displayed by 
the other eight, are such as to entitle them to a higher 
position than several of the "received" poets of the 
past and present centuries. 

The list we have named comprises, Mrs. Norton ; 
Miss E. B. Barrett; Maria del Occi 'ente ; Lady Nor- 
thampton (author of " Irene") ; Caroline Souihey ; Miss 
Lowe; the Author of "IX Poems;" Sara Coleridge; 
Z 



266 MISS E. B. BARRETT. 

and one other, a lady of rank, whom it was a pity to in- 
troduce in company where she has no claim to rank. 
The reviewer proposed to make a wreath of them after 
ihe manner of Meleager, and appropriately commenced 
with Mrs. Norton as " the Rose, or, if she like it, Love- 
lies-a- bleeding ;'''' and Miss Barrett as " Greek Valoian, or 
Ladder to Heaven, or, if she pleases, Wild Angelical 
The former lady is well known, personally, to a large 
and admiring circle, and is also extensively known to 
the reading public by her works. The latter lady, or 
" fair shade" — whichever she may be — is not known 
personally, to anybody, we had almost said ; but her 
poetry is known to a highly intellectual class, and she 
" lives" in constant correspondence with many of the- 
most eminent persons of the time. When, how^ever, 
we consider the many strange and ingenious conjectures' 
that are made in after years, concerning authors who 
appeared but little among their contemporaries, or of 
whose biography little is actually known, we should 
not be in the least surprised, could we lift up our ear 
out of our grave a century hence, to hear some learned 
Thebans expressing shrewd doubts as to whether such 
an individual as Miss E. B. Barrett had ever really ex- 
isted. Letters and notes, and exquisite English lyrics, 
and perhaps a few elegant Latin verses, and spirited 
translations from ^Eschylus, might all be discovered 
under that name ; but this would not prove that such a 
lady had ever dwelt among us. Certain admirable and 
erudite prose articles on the " Greek Christian Poets,"" 
might likewise be ascertained by the exhumation of 
sundry private letters and documents, touching periodi- 
cal literature, to have been from the hand of that same 
" Valerian ;" but neither the poetry, nor the prose, nor 
the delightfully gossipping notes to fair friends, nor the 
frank correspondence with scholars, such as Lady Jane 
Grey might have written to Roger Ascham — no, not 
even if the great-grandson of some learned Jewish doc- 
tor could show a note in Hebrew (quite a likely thing 
really to be extant) with the same signature, darkly 
translated by four letters — nay, though he should dis- 
play as a relic treasured in his family, the very pens 
with its oblique Hebraic nib, that wrote it — not any 
one, nor all of those things could be sufficient to de- 
monstrate the fact, that such a lady had really adorned 
the present century. 



AND MRS. NORTON. 267 

In such chiaroscuro, therefore, as circumstances per- 
mit, we will endeavour to offer sufficient grounds for 
our readers' belief, to the end that posterity may at least 
have the best authorities and precedents we can furnish. 
Confined entirely to her own apartment, and almost her- 
metically sealed, in consequence of some extremely 
delicate state of health, the poetess of whom we write 
is scarcely seen by any but her own family. But though 
thus separated from the world — and often, during many 
weeks at a time, in darkness almost equal to that of 
night. Miss Barrett has yet found means by extraordina- 
iry inherent energies to develope her inward nature ; to 
give vent to the soul in a successful struggle with its 
destiny while on earth ; and to attain and master more 
knowledge and accomplishments than are usually with- 
in the power of those of either sex who possess every 
adventitious opportunity, as well as health and industry. 
Six or seven years of this imprisonment she has now 
endured, not with vain -repinings, though deeply con- 
scious of the loss of external nature's beauty ; but with 
resignation, with patience, with cheerfulness, and gen- 
erous sympathies towards the world without ; — with in- 
defatigable " work" by thought, by book, by the pen, 
and with devout faith, and adoration, and a high and 
hopeful waiting for the time when this mortal frame 
"putteth on immortality." 

The period when a strong prejudice existed against 
learned ladies and " blues" has gone by, some time since ; 
yet in case any elderly objections may still exist on this 
score, or that some even of the most liberal-minded 
readers may entertain a degree of doubt as to whether 
a certain austere exclusiveness and ungenial pedantry 
might infuse a slight tinge into the character of ladies 
possessing Miss Barrett's attainments, a few words may 
be added to prevent erroneous impressions on this score. 
Probably no living individual has a more extensive and 
diffuse acquaintance with literature — that of the present 
day inclusive — than Miss Barrett. Although she has 
read Plato, in the original, from beginning to end, and 
the Hebrew Bible from Genesis to Malachi (nor suffered 
her course to be stopped by the Chaldean), yet there is 
probably not a single good romance of the most roman- 
tic kind in whose marvellous and impossible scenes she 
has not delighted, over the fortunes of whose immacu- 
late or incredible heroes and heroines she has not wept; 



268 MISS E, B. BARRETT 

nor a clever novel or fanciful sketch of our own day, 
over the brightest pages of which she has not smiled 
inwardly, or laughed outright, just as their authors them- 
selves would have desired. All of this, our readers may 
be assured that we believe to be as strictly authentic as 
the very existence of the lady in question, although, as.. 
we have already confessed, \Ve have no absolute know- 
ledge of this fact. But lest the reader should exclaim, 
" Then, after all, there really may be no such person !" 
we should bear witness t© having been shown a letter 
of Miss Mitford's to a friend, from which it was plainly 
to be inferred that she had actually seen and conversed 
with her. The date has unfortunately escaped us. 

We cannot admit that any picture, engraving, or other 
portrait of Mrs. Norton with which the public has been, 
favoured does full justice to the original ; nevertheless 
they may be considered as likenesses, to a certam ex- 
tent, and by reason of these, and her popular position 
as an authoress, any introductory remarks on the pre- 
sent occasion would be needless. 

There are few poems which would be more accept- 
able to the majority of lovers of poetry than Mrs. Nor- 
ton's " Dream," from which we make the following ex- 
tract ; — 

"Oh ! Twilight! Spirit that does render birth 
To dim enchantments; melting heaven with earth, 
Leaving on craggy hills and running streams 
A softness like the atmosphere of dreams ; 
Thy hour to all is welcome ! Faint and sweet 
Thy light falls round the peasant's homeward feet, 
Who, slow returning from his task of toil. 
Sees the low sunset gild the cultured soil. 
And, tho' such radiance round him brightly glows, 
Marks the small spark his cottage window throws, 
Still as his heart foiestals his weary pace, 
Fondly he dreams of each familiar face, 
Recalls the treasures of his narrow life, 
His rosy children and his sunburnt wife, 
To whom his coming is the chief event 
Of simple daj's in cheerful labour spent. 
The rich man's chariot hath gone whirling past. 
And these poor cottagers hnve only cast 
One careless glance on all that show of pride, 
Then to their tasks turn'd quietly aside ; 
But him they wait for, him they welcome home, 
Fixed sentinels look forth to see him come; 
The fiigot sent for when the fire grew dim, 
The frugal meal prepared, are all for him ; 
For him the watching of that sturdy boy. 
For him those smiles of tenderness and joy, 
For him — who plods his sauntering way along, 
Whistling the fragment of some village song'"' 



AND MRS. ISORTON. 269 

The above is characteristic of a style in which Mrs. 
Norton excels, and it is a popular error to regard her 
solely as the poetess of impassioned personalities, 
great as she undoubtedly has shown herself in such de- 
lineations. 

The next extract is from Miss Barrett's " Seraphim," 
^vhere Ador, a seraph, exhorts Zerah not to linger nor 
look through the closed gate of heaven, after the Voice 
had said " Go !" 

"Thou — wherefore dost thou wait? 
Oh ! gaze not backward, brother mine ; 
The deep love in thy mystic eyne 
Deepening inward, til! is made 
A copy of the earth-love shade — 
Oh ! gaze not through the gate ! 
God filleth heaven with Gk)d's own solitude 

Till all its pavements glow ! 
His Godhead being no more subdued 
By itself, to glories low 

Which seraphs can sustain, 
What if thou in gazing so, 
Should behold but only one 
Attribute, the veil undone — 
And that the one to which we press 
Nearest, for its gentleness — 

Ay ! His love ! 
How the deep ecstatic pain 
Thy being's strength would capture ! 
Without a language for the rapture, 
Without a music strong to corae, 

And set th' adoring free ; 
For ever, ever, wouldst thou be 
Amid the general chorus dumb, — 

■God-stricken, in seraphic agony I 

Or, brother, what if on thine eyes 
In vision bare should rise 
The life-fount whence his hand did gather 
With solitary force 
Our immortalities ! — 
Straightway how thine own would witlier, 
Falter like a human breath, — 
And shririk into a point like death, 
By gazing on its source ! 

We cannot do belter, we think, than attempt to dis- 
play the different characteristics of the genius of the 
two highly-gifted women who form the subject of the 
present paper, by placing them in such harmonious 
juxtaposition as may be most advantageous to both, 
and convey the clearest synthetical impression to the 
reader. 

The prominent characteristics of these two poetesses 

may be designated as the struggles of woman towards 

happiness, and the struggles of a soul towards heaven. 

The one is oppressed with a sense of injust.ce, and 

Z2 



270 MISS E. B. BARRETT, ETC. 

feels the need of human love ; the other is troubled 
with a sense of mortality, and aspires to identify herself 
with elherial existences. The one has a certain tinge 
of morbid despondency taking the tone of complaint 
and the amplification of private griefs ; the other too 
often displays an energetic morbidity on the subject of 
death, together with a certain predilection for " terrors." 
The imagination of Mrs. Norton is chiefly occupied 
with domestic feelings and images, and breathes melodi- 
ous plaints or indignations over the desecrations of her 
sex's loveliness; that of Miss Barrett often wanders 
amidst the supernatural darkness of Calvary sometimes 
with anguish and tears of blood, sometimes like one 
who echoes the songs of triumphal quires. Both pos- 
sess not only great mental energies, but that description 
of strength which springs from a fine nature, and mani- 
fests itself in productions which evidently originated in 
genuine impulses of feeling. The subjects they both 
choose appear spontaneous, and not resulting from study 
or imitation, though cast into careful moulds of art. 
Both are excellent artists : the one in dealing with sub- 
jects of domestic interest; the other in designs from 
sacred subjects, poems of religious tendency, or of the 
supernatural world. Mrs. Norton is beautifully clear 
and intelligible in her narrative and course of thought 
and feeling ; Miss Barrett has great inventiveness, but 
not an equal power in construction. The one is all 
womanhood ; the other all wings. The one writes from 
the dictates of a human heart in all the eloquence of 
beauty and individuality; the other like an inspired 
priestess — not without a most truthful heart, but a heart 
that is devoted to religion, and whose individuality is 
cast upward in the divine afflatus, and dissolved and 
carried off" in the recipient breath of angelic ministrants. 
Some of Mrs. Norton's songs for music are very 
lovely, and other of her lyrics have the qualities of 
sweetness and pathos to a touching and thrilling de- 
gree. One of the domestic poems in the " Dream and 
other poems," is a striking composition. The personaF 
references in the miscellaneous poems are deep and 
true, and written with unaffected tenderness. She has 
contributed many prose tales full of colour and expres- 
sion to several of the Annuals ; but these, together with 
her musical talents and editorial labours, are much too 
popularly known and admired to render any further re- 
marks that we could oflfer upon tliem al all requisite. 



BANIM 

AND 

THE IRISH NOVELISTS. 

" Great heart, and brisht humours, my masters ; with a wit that never 
lingers, and a sorrow that sits with her head under one wing." — Ous- 
Ck)MEDy. 

"Certes, sir, your painted eloqueuce, 
So pay, so fresh, and eke so talkative. 
It doth transcend the wit of Dame Prudence 
For to declare your thought or to descrive, 
So gloriously glad language ye contrive." — Chauckr. 

"Couhl he dance on the head of him, and think with his heels, then were 
he a blessed spirit." — Old Ireland. 

" Ock, Shane, Fadh — Shane Fadh, a cushla machree! you're going to break 
up the ring — going to lave us, avounieen, for ivver, and we to hear your 
light foot and sweet voice, morning, noon, and night, no more !"— Carleton. 

The author of the " O'Hara Tales" stands pre-emi- 
nent ainong the delineators of Irish character, and quite 
distinct from the mere painters of Irish manners. He 
goes to the very heart and soul of the matter. He is 
neither the eulogist nor the vilifier, neither the patron- 
izing apologist, nor the caricaturist of his countrymen, 
but their true dramatic historian. Fiction such as his, 
is truer than any history, because it deals not only in 
facts and their causes, but with the springs of motive 
and action. It not only details circumstances, but 
probes into and discovers the living elements on which 
circumstances operate. His Irishmen are not strange, 
unaccountable creatures, but members of the great hu- 
man family, with a temperament of their own, marking 
a peculiar race, and his Irishwomen are in especial 
drawn with the utmost truth and depth of feeling. He 
knows well the sources of those bitter waters which 
have converted the impulsive, generous, simple-mind- 
ed, humorous, and irascible race with whom he has to 
deal, into lawless ruffians, or unprincipled knaves. He 
loves to paint the national character in its genial state, 
ardent in love, constant in friendship, with a ready tear 
for the mourner, and a ready laugh for the reveller, 



272 BANIM AND THE 

overflowing with gratitude for kindness, with open 
hand and heart, and unsuspicious as a child ; and re- 
versing the picture, to show that same character goaded 
by oppression and contemptuous injustice, into a cruel 
mocking demon in human form, or into some reckless, 
libertine, idle, hopeless tattered rascal. The likeness 
cannot be disputed. The description carries internal 
evidence with it. Whoever has been in Ireland re- 
members' illustrations of it, and begins to discover the 
how and the why of things which before puzzled him. 
Even those who have never been in Ireland, cannot 
have gone through their lives without observing the 
cheerfulness, humour, and gaiety of its natives, even un- 
der depressing circumstances, their natural politeness, 
the warmth of their gratitude, their ready helpfulness, 
all evidences of a character to be moulded into excel- 
lent good form by love and kindness. The reverse of 
the picture need not be dwelt on. It is the theme of 
all the world. Irish reprobates and Irish criminals are 
plentiful. Banim and some few others can teach why 
Ihey are so. 

In the small compass of nine pages of Banim's admi- 
rable story called " Crohoore of the Bill-Hook," there is 
contained what may be called the natural history of 
" White-boyism," and in those pages is comprised the 
philosophy of the whole matter, with its illustrations in 
human tears and drops of blood. In the vivid and ex- 
citing description of the White-boy outrage on the tithe- 
proctor, where the remorseless cruelty is rendered more 
revolting by its accompaniment of the never-absent 
Irish humour that makes the torturer comfort his 
wretched victim before he cuts off his ears, with " Don't 
be the lasteunasy in yoursef, a-gra ; you may be right 
sartin, I'll do the thing nate and handy" — how finely 
does the author claim and obtain impartial justice for 
the perpetrators, at the tribunal of eternal truth, by the 
few words with which he prefaces his dreadful narra- 
tive. " The legal retribution" says he "visited on Da- 
mien and Ravaillac has found its careful registers: nor 
in this transcript of real scenes, shall the illegal violence 
done to an Irish tithe-proctor, want true and courage- 
ous historians." Who that has ever had his soul sick- 
ened by even a glance into the cold methodical detail 
of the exquisite tortures, that were each -day, and day 
after day, applied to Ravaillac — the pincers, the fire, the 



IRISH NOVELISTS. 273^^ 

rack, the screw — while the *' Do not drive my soul to 
despair !" shrieked out in vain, except to be recorded 
by the witnessing secreta y — every agonized exclama- 
tion being carefully noted — who does not feel the force 
of those words'? Despotic power had transformed 
these legal and highly-polished tormentors into devils. 
Ignorance, wrong, and ruin had converted those illegal 
and outcast men of impulse, into mocking savages. 1ji- 
divlduril character and varied circumstance, acting and 
re-aciing discordantly, these make up the mystery of 
human woe. Rise to a sufficient elevation, and the 
criminals might be seen to change places, or all fade 
into one mass of suffering wanderers in the dark, con- 
cerning whom horror and hatred would turn into deep 
pity ; and tears and an effort to save take the place of 
re;ribution. 

WV have been dwelling on the darker and stronger 
portraits in Banim's works. As an illustration of the 
humorous, we may lake " Andy Houlahan," in the same 
story of "■ Crohoore." There he stands, true to the life. 
"Tall, square, slight, loose, bony," as if he had been 
put togeiher by chance; " looking like a bold but imper- 
fect sketch of a big fellow;" his "skin fitting tight to 
his high cheek-bones ;" his " expression of good-humour, 
foolishness, fidget, and subtlety ;" his clothes looking as 
if " they had been tossed on with a pitclifork;" his hat, 
"that part of every man's costume in its shape and ad- 
justment most redolent of character," going through all 
the varieties of adjustment, from being '" pushed back to 
the last holding point of his skull" to being "dragged 
down into his eyes" according to the mood of the wear- 
er; liis long outside coat fallen from his shoulders, pin- 
ioning his arms and trailing in the dust or mud; the 
buttons at his knees, collar, and vest unfastened; his 
st(jckings " festooning down to his brogues." Now, of 
this Aniiy Houlahan, it is just what is to be expected 
that he should perpetrate a succession of well-meant 
blunders, and so he does. He is brave to recklessness 
in real danger, but as to witches, ghosts, and fairies, an 
arrant coward; the mosiloving and faithful creature in 
the world, yet marring and counteracting every effort 
to serve the friend he loves best in the world, and near- 
ly getting him hanged at last ; then, (after his friend has 
been saved by other intervention,) pulling down the 
gallows, and stamping the coffin to shivers ; and con- 



274 CANIM AND THE 

cludiug by startling all the assembled magistrates in 
grave discussion, by his loud " whoop," when he sees 
his friend made all right and happy at last ; for which 
finishing stroke he must give his own excuse, "It's a 
fashion we have in screechin' that a way, when we're 
glad, or sorry, or a thing o' the kind." 

Banim's conception of his subject is equal to his skill 
in the development of character. He has always a 
definite aim and purpose, and always a plot. However 
elaborately he may finish his individual figures, they 
are always skilfully grouped, and all the groups to- 
gether make an harmonious whole. His management 
of his subject is equally fine. He invests it with an 
interest, humorous, terrible, or pathetic. We are suffi- 
ciently behind the scenes to feel with and for his cha- 
racters, and to attach due importance to his incidents, 
yet he does not disclose his "mystery" till the proper 
moment. " Crohoore," is an excellent illustration of 
this. We defy any one, unless he resort to the unjusti- 
fiable expedient of "looking at the end," to divine how 
all will be explained to his heart's ease and thorough 
satisfaction at last. 

The thrilling interest attached to the history of the 
young priest in " The Nowlans," affords another in- 
stance of the power and passion with which this author 
works out his conceptions. The struggle between 
nature and conscience, unnaturally opposed as they are 
by the vow of celibacy, is here rendered more terrible 
in its effect by the youth and the ardent, impetuous 
character of the priest, which fight desperately against 
his high sense of duty and devotion to his faith. The 
lovely and refined character of Lettey, her sweet, ten- 
der, trustful, artless, self-sacrificing spirit, and her ex- 
cessive yet trembling love for him, obliterating from 
her consciousness all thought of her own superior sta- 
tion and fortune — all this enhances the deadly eflfort it 
cost them to part for ever, engages our deepest sympa- 
thies, and carries us along with them in their horror- 
striken flight together, when that interview which they 
had meant to be their last on earth, has imited their 
fates for ever. Then follow the cruel persecution of 
the world, the vain struggle with its anathema, and the 
final tragedy — the lone waste cabin in the lone field 
surrounded by the darkness of night, by the snow and 
winter wind ; the door torn from its hinges and raised 



IRISH NOVELISTS. 27& 

on four stones from off the wet floor ; upon it the corpse 
of the beautiful young woman clasping the dead infant 
to her breast; the rushlight stuck in a lump of yellow ' 
clay flickering by their side ; at their feet, the young 
-man, kneeling — his face pale as their's, " with unwink- 
ing distended eyes rivetted on the lowly bier." 

" The Nowlans" is, perhaps, the finest of Banim's 
works ; but they are all more or less stamped with 
genius. We could dwell on many more of them ; they 
are, however, all before the public and well knovvn^ 
and their peculiar characteristics are similar to those 
we have enumerated in this short sketch of " Crohoore" 
and " The Nowlans." 

Lover is a very forcibly eff'ective, and truthful writer 
of Irish novels, and falls into the ranks after Banim. 
He has less passion, but more picturesque vivacity.. 
As a writer and composer of songs (not to mention the 
charming expression with which he sings them) Mr. 
Lover is perhaps still more popular, and his ballads 
have a certain singable beauty in them, and a happy 
occasional fancifulness. His novels, however, are the 
stuff" whereof his fame is made, and they are highly 
vital, and of great value in the sense of commentary on 
the national character. 

Who ever read Rory O'More from beginning to end, 
without being seized with many a fit of uncontrollable 
laughter, and also shedding some tears 1 — or who ever 
began to read it, and left off" without reading to the 
endl Genuine pathos, and as genuine fun — a true love 
of nature, and simple true-heartedness — are all there ;. 
and the dialogues are exquisite, and full of Irish humour.. 

The writings of William Carleton must not be omit- 
ted. If Banim may be characterized as the dramatic 
historian of his countrymen, Carleton may with equal 
truth be styled their faithful portrait-painter. He draws 
from the life. In his manly and unaff'ected introduc- 
tion to " Traits and Stories of the Irish Peasantry," he 
has given his auto-biography, and explained how it is 
he can so accurately describe, because he was himself 
one of them : — A good reason for his knowledge ; but 
in himself is the power to use it with talent and effect. 

The Irish Tales of Mrs. S. C. Hall have character 
and life, tenderness and softness. She has written on& 
or two novels ; but the performances she is better 
known by, are her miscellaneous light essays or tales, 



276 BANIM AND THE 

with which the periodical literature of the day is sown 
abundantly, and the characteristic sketches illustrative 
of her native Ireland, of which she published a volume * 
not long ago, in conjunction with her husband. Her 
miscellaneous sketches, in general, are graceful, and 
womanly in the most amiable sense. 

Lever, well known in the popular literature of the 
day as " Harry Lorrequer," writes Irish novels too, and 
therefore is mentioned in this place. He has a large 
circle of readers, and many of them would say they 
prefer him to anybody else ; but if you tried to elicit 
from them one good reason, they would have no better 
answer to give than "Oh! he's a capital fellow!" 
What the French call material life, is the whole life he 
recognizes ; and that life is a jest, and a very loud one, 
in his philosophy. The sense of beauty and love he 
does not recognize at all, except in our modern condi- 
tion of social animals. To read him is like sitting in 
the next room to an orgie of gentlemen topers, with 
their noisy gentility and 'hip! hip! hurras!' and the 
rattling din of plates and glasses. In his way, he is a 
very clever writer, nobody can deny ; but he is con- 
tracted and conventional, and unrefined in his line of 
conventionality. His best descriptions are of military 
life. He is most at home in the mess-room. He has 
undoubted humour and a quick talent of invention of 
comic scenes, which generally end in broad frirce. He 
does not represent fairly even the social and jovial side 
of men of much refinement, or, if he does, he should 
not represent them as he does, on all sides thus social 
and jovial. 

"A capital fellow" — is Lorrequer accounted by his 
readers, and that expression we take to be the most 
compact and complete estimate of him. The sort of 
reader for Harry Lorrequer, is one of those right jovial 
blades who can'dismiss his six dozen of oysters and a 
tankard of stout "after the play," and then adjourn 
with some other capital fellows to brandy-and-water 
and a Welsh rabbit, pleasantly relieved by poached 
eggs, and cisars, and a comic song; yet rise the next 
morning without a fraction of headache, without the 
knowledge of a stomach, and go to breakfast with a 
fox-hu;iter. 

The present period is certainly destined to display a 
singular variety, not only in the classes of literary pro- 



IRISH NOVELISTS. 277 

<3iiction,but in the different modifications of each class. 
We think the most omniverous reader would be dis- 
composed by the contrasts, if for liis morning's reading 
he took alternately a chapter from Banim, a chapter from 
Lady Morgan's " Wild Irish Girl," a chapter from Mrs. 
S. C. HalTs " Irish Tales," a high-brogue chapter from 
Lover's " Rory O'More," an after-dinner scene from 
Harry Lorreqner, and concluded by going to a wake or 
a wedding with Carleton. 

A A 



ROBERT BROWNING AND J. W. 
•MARSTON. 

" One midniglit dark a Spirit electric came, 
And shot an invisible arrow through the sky !" 

" A poet hidden in the light of thought." 

■" The art of the poet is to separate from the fable whatever does not essen- 
tially belong to it ; whatever, in the daily necessities of real life, and the petty 
occupations to -which they give rise, interrupts the progress of important ac- 
ti<»s. — A. W. Schlagel. Lectures on Dramatic Art and Literature. 

" Break, Phantasy, from thy cave of cloud, 
And spread thy purple wings ! 
Now all thy figures are allowed, 

And various shapes of things." — Ben Jonson. 

The spirit of passionate and imaginative poetry is not 
dead among us in llie " ignorant present" — it is alive, 
and of great splendour, filling the eyes and ears of those 
who by nature and study are fitted to receive such in- 
fluences. If dazzling lines, passages, and scenes, were 
asked in proof of this, what an array might instantly be 
selected from the comparatively little known works of 
Mr. Browning— Mr. Darley — the author of the " Man- 
uscripts of Erdely" — the author of " Festus," and sev- 
eral others still less known. While the struggle of this 
spirit to ascend visibly from the denser masses around — 
a struggle understood by so few, interesting to fewer, 
believed in by fewer still — while this is going on, there 
is also a struggle of a more practical kind in the field of 
letters, which is well patronized, greatly assisted, and 
expected to be successful — the spirit of reality, or of 
the artistical representation of reality. Such is appa- 
rently the creed, as it has hitherto been the practice, of 
Mr. Marston and many others. This is the principle 
which is thought to be the true representative of the 
tendency of the present age ; so much easier to under- 
stand than the ideal ; and so sure eventually of triumph- 
ant success. Believing in this, Madame Vestris car- 
peted and upholstered the stage, and Mr. Macready car- 
ried the ruinous error to a still greater extent in his 
"gettings up." But this principle is nol the true repre- 
sentative of the age ; it is not understood much belter 



ROBERT BROWNING AND J. \V. MARSTON. 279 

than the ideal and imaginative, though all mechanical- 
minded men fully believe they can grasp it — so palpable 
it seems ; and it will not be successful. Hitherto it has 
always failed. It cannot even obtain a temporary suc- 
cess — for all the spirit of railroads and all the steam. 
Their success is no precedent for art. Art is in a false 
position among them. The spirit of the Fine Arts can- 
not be identical with the material forces and improve- 
ments of the age, which are progressive — the former is 
not. Its greatness is self-centred, and revolves in its 
own proper orbit. 

The career of the author of " Paracelsus," extending 
at present over not much more than half the period of 
Mr. Tennyson, presents different features, some of which 
appear more fortunate and some less. His reception 
was comparatively good ; we may say very good. Sev- 
eral of those periodicals, in which the critics seem dis- 
posed to regard poetry of a superior kind as a thing to 
be respected and studied, hailed the appearance of Mr. 
Robert Browning with all the honours which can rea- 
sonably be expected to be awarded to a new comer, 
who is moreover alive. In more than one quarter the 
young poet was fairly crowned. The less intelligent 
class of critics spoke of him with praise ; guarding their 
expressions with an eye to retreat, if necessary, at any 
future time, made various extracts, and set him to grow. 
The rest did what is usual. Now, this reception was, 
all things considered, very good and promising; the poet 
had no enemies banded together to hunt and hoot him 
down, and he had admirers among the best class of 
critics. Here was a fine table-land whereon to build a 
reputation, and to make visible to all men those new- 
fabrics of loveliness and intellectual glory which w^ere 
manifestly germinating in his brain. Mr. Browning's 
next production was a tragedy, w'hich, " marvellous to 
relate," he got acted immediately — an event quite un- 
precedented on the modern stage, except with those two 
or three dramatic authors who have previously passed 
through the customary delays preceding representation. 
It succeeded, as the saying is, but was not very at- 
tractive, and being printed "as acted," did not advance 
the poet's reputation. After this, Mr. Browning went 
to Italy, where he appears to have felt himself far too 
happy for the work that was before him; his spiritual 
-existence drinking in draughts too deep and potent of 



280 ROBERT BROWNING 

the divine air, and all the intense associations of the 
scenes in which he dwelt, and dreamed, and revelled, to 
suffer him to apply a steady strength, to master his own 
impulses, and to subdue the throng of elementary ma- 
terials, so as to compress them into one definite design, 
suited to the general understandings of mankind. 

After a silence of four years, the poet published 
" Sordello," which has proved, and will inevitably con- 
tinue to prove, the richest puzzle to all lovers of poetry 
which was ever given to the world. Never was extra- 
ordinary wealth squandered in so extraordinary a man- 
ner by any prodigal son of Apollo. Its reception, if not 
already known to the reader, may be guessed without 
much difficulty ; but the poem has certainly never been 
fairly estimated. The last publications of Mr. Brown- 
ing are in a dramatic form and spirit ; they were issued 
at intervals, and we trust will continue — the series bear- 
ing the title of " Bells and Pomegranates." The public 
has treated them hitherto, we believe, with less neglect 
than is usual with dramatic productions which have not 
been substantiated to the understanding by stage repre- 
sentation, although it is still to be feared that the title 
of the series has not induced any anticipative sympathy. 

Mr. Marston's first work was the play of the " Patri- 
cian's Daughter," and was the subject of a second 
" marvel," for this, also, obtained speedy representation. 
To this play, as to Mr. Browning's "Strafford," Mr» 
Macready took a sudden fancy — fatal omen of invaria- 
ble results ! Both of these works are examples of men 
of genius going astray, the one turning tragedy into a 
spasmodic skeleton, the other carrying the appointments 
of what is technically and degradingly termed " a coat- 
and-breeches comedy" into the tragic arena, and wound- 
ing Art with real-life weapons. The play has had some 
temporary success ; but it will only be temporary. Mr, 
Marston's next work was "Gerald," a poem in a dra- 
matic form, illustrative of the old melancholy story of 
the struggles of Genius with the experiences of the ac- 
tual world. The subject of Mr. Browning's first work 
was in some respects similar; but the struggles of 
" Paracelsus" are always treated poetically, while those 
of " Gerald" have a harsh matter-of-fact tone — for such 
is the principle of " realizing" in art. 

" Paracelsus" is evidently the work of a young poet 
of premature powers — of one who sought to project his 



AND J. W. MARSTON. 281 

imaginalion beyond the bounds of his future, as well as 
present, experience, and whose intellect had resolved 
to master all the results thus obtained. We say the 
powers were premature, simply because such a design 
could only be conceived by the most vigorous energies 
of a spirit just issuing forth with " blazmg wings," too 
full of strength and too far of sight to believe in the or- 
dinary laws and boundaries of mortality. It is the ef- 
fort of a mind that wilfully forgets, and resolves to set 
aside its corporeal conditions. Even its possible fail- 
ure is airily alluded to at the outset, and treated in the 
same way, not merely as no sort of reason for hesita- 
ting to make the attempt to gain " forbidden knowledge," 
but as a result which is solely referable to the Cause of 
its own aspirations and impulses. 

" What though 
It be so 1 If indeed the strong desire 
Eclipse the aim in me ? If splendour break 
Upon the outset of my path alone. 
And duskest shade succeed? What fairer seal 
Shall I require to my authentic mission 
Than this fierce energ-y .' This instinct striving 
Because its nature is to strive ? Enticed 
By the security of no broad course — 
Where error is not, but success is sure. 
How know I else such glorious fate my own, 
But in the restless, irresistible force 
That works within me '? Is it for human will 
To institute such impulses? Still less 
To disregard their promptings ? What should I 
Do, kept among you all ; your loves, your cares, 
Your life — all to be mine ? Be sure that God 
Ne'er dooms to waste the strength he deigns impart. 
Ask the gier-eagle why she stoops at once 
Into the vast and unexplored abyss ! 
What full grown power informs her from the first, 
Why she not marvels, strenuously beating 
The silent boundless regions of the sky 1" 

Paracelsus, p. 18, 19. 

It should be observed that reference is made exclu- 
sively to the poet's creation, not to the " Paracelsus" of 
history. The higher destinies of man, which are con- 
ceived by the "Paracelsus" we are contemplating, as 
attainable on earth, are thus sublimely intimated: — 

" The wide East, where old Wisdom sprung ; 
The bright South, where she dwelt ; the populous North, 
All are pass'd o'er— it lights on me. 'Tis time 
New hopes should animate the world— new light 
Should dawn from new revealings to a race 
Weigh'd down so long, forgotten so long ; so shall 
The heaven reserv'd for us at last, receive 
No creatures whom unwonted splendours blind. 
But ardent to confront the unclouded blaze, 

A a2 



282 ROBERT BROWNING 

Whose beams not seldom lit their pilgrimage ; 
Not seldom glorified their life below." 

Paracelsus, p. 20. 

A Promethean character pervades the poem through- 
out ; in the main design, as well as the varied aspira- 
tions and struggles to attain knowledge, and power, and 
happiness for mankind. But at the same time there is 
an intense craving after the forbidden secrets of crea- 
tion, and eternity, and power, which place ''Paracel- 
sus" in the same class as " Faust," and in close affinity 
with all those works, the object of which is an attempt 
to penetrate the mysteries of existence — the infinity 
within us and without us. Need it be said, that the re- 
sult is in all the samel— and the baffled magic— the 
sublime occult— the impassioned poetry — all display the 
same ashes which were once wings. The form, the 
mode, the impetus and course of thought and emotion, 
admit, however, of certain varieties, and " Paracelsus" 
is an original work. Its aim is of the highest kind; in 
full accord and harmony with the spirit of the age; and 
we admit that it has been accomplished, in so far as 
such a design can well be: for since the object of all 
such abstractions as Paracelsus must necessarily fail, 
individually and practically, the true end obtained is that 
of refining and elevating others, by the contemplation 
of such efforts, and giving a sort of polarity to the vague 
impulses of mankind towards the lofty and the benefi- 
cent. It also endeavours to sound the depths of exist- 
ence for hidden treasures of being. 

Living a long life— dreaming a lofty dream — working 
and suffering, Paracelsus now lies dead before us ! Be- 
hold an epitome of the course he ran ! Paracelsus as- 
pires. He has a glorious vision of the discovery of 
hidden knowledge never as yet revealed to man. He 
believes that if he constantly seeks it, and works for it, 
he shall attain it ; and that, were it not possible, these 
"vast longings" would not be "sent to direct us." He 
"stands at first, where all aspire at last," and pursues 
the ever-fleeting "secret of the world," of man and our 
ultimate destiny. He searches at home and abroad; 
but, chief of all, he searches within himself, believing 
that there is " an inmost centre in us all, where truth 
abides in fulness ;" and that to know, 

" Rather consists in opening out a way 
Whence the imprisoned splendour may dart forth. 
Than in effecting' entry for a light 
Supposed to be without." 



AND J. W. MAESTON. 280 

Filled with the divine portion of truth, which he mis- 
takes for the whole, Paracelsus pursues his labours, 
*' serene amidst the echoes, beams, and glooms," yet 
struggling onward with impassioned will, and subduing 
his life "10 the one purpose whereto he has ordained 
it," till at length he "attains" — But what? — Imperfect 
knowledge! He finds that knowledge without love is 
intellect without heart, and a bitter, as it must ever be a 
certain, disappointment. Paracelsus looks around him, 
and renews his labours. 

" This life of mine 
Must be lived out, and a grave thoroug-hly earned." 

He becomes a miraculous physician — professor of 
medicine at Basil; and his cures, his doctrines, and his 
fame are noised abroad in the world. But he is not sat- 
isfied : he feels the poverty of such reputation, when 
compared with what he would do for the human race. 
Again Paracelsus aspires. What his object now is in 
this part of the poem is not so clear; but knowledge, 
and love, and disappointed efforts, and fresh struggles 
and apprehensions, are all at work, while Paracelsus is 
at the same time full of anguish at the persecution which 
now hunts him from place to place, as an impostor and 
a quack. His feelings often display strong signs of 
over-tasked powers, and impel his mind along the bor- 
ders of delirium and madness. He looks back upon the 
past, where " the heaving sea is black behind ;" and in 
the miseries and horrors of the present, he feels at times 
that " there is a hand groping amid the darkness ta 
catch us." 

The closing scene is near. Paracelsus finally " at- 
tains." And what 1 — Purified feelings, and a clear 
knowledge of what may, and may not be. He is on the 
brink of the grave, and of eternity ; a sublime fire is be- 
fore his path, a constant music is in his ears, and a melt- 
ing into "bliss for evermore." True to his ruling pas- 
sion, he pauses a moment to speculate on his momea^ 
tons state — the awful threshold on which he stands — for 
a last chance of discovering "some further cause fo? 
this peculiar mood;" but it " has somehow slipt away" 
from him. He stands in "his naked spirit so majea 
tical," and full, once more, of ennobling hopes, looka 
forward to the time when man shall conmience the in- 
fancy of a higher slate of being. Then, with one last 
sigh over the " waste and wear" of faculties " displayed 



■284: ROBERT BROWNING 

in vain, but bom to prosper in some better sphere," the 
old heart-broken philosopher closes his eyes in death. 
His awe-stricken friend, standing mute for hours over 
the pale clay, at length slowly murmurs — 

" And this was Paracelsus !" 

The genius of Mr. Marston has hitherto displayed a 
misgiving originality — or a fancied originality — self- 
confident at its first launch upon the tide, and midway 
calling for help from the past, and supporting its sinking 
venture by all manner of old associations. He took the 
bull by the horns, and let him go again; the conse- 
quence has been that he has only aggravated and exalt- 
ed the power he intended to tame or transfer. He in- 
tended to show that the bull was a real thing, and the 
provocation transforms it to a Jupiter. The principle 
on which the " Patrician's Daughter" was written, (a 
kind of following in the track of the " Lady of Lyons,") 
was to prove that reality and the present time constitu- 
ted the best material and medium for modern poetry, 
especially dramatic poetry. Now this very play con- 
tains as many antiquated words and phrases as any 
modern drama written in direct imitation of the Eliza- 
bethan dramatists. As an acting tragedy it has failed 
to take any satisfactory hold upon the stage — for ladies 
with fashionable parasols, and gentlemen in grenadiers' 
caps, are an outrage to tragic art, which appeals to the 
hearts and businesses of men through universal sympa- 
thies ; and inasmuch as it cannot be aided by matter-of- 
fact costumes, so it may be injured by ugliness in that 
respect, more particularly when it constantly calls back 
(instead of stimulating) the imagination, and reminds it 
that all this pretended reality is not real. An extract 
from De Quincy's " Essay on Imitation in the Fine 
Arts," v/ill make this question more clear : 

"The first error of the artist,— consists in stepping- beyond his art to seek 
in tlie resources of another, an increase of imitative resemblance. The second 
error of the artist,— consists in seeking truth fshort of the limits of every art) 
by a system of servnle copy, which deprives the imitation or the image of that 
fictitious part tohich constitutes at once its essence and its character. 

" In every art there must be with respect to truth sDxne fiction, and with re- 
spect to resemblance something incomplete." 

In the delineation of his chief character, moreover, 
Mr. Marston commits the very dangerous error of say- 
ing prodigious things of his hero's abilities, but not 
showing his greatness by his actions. Among other 



AND J. W. MARSTON. 286 

extravagances he calls him " the apostle of his age," 
and sliuus no shadow of justification for the title. 

We iiave here to mention, chiefly for the sake of rep- 
rehension, ilie numerous reality tragedies of the author 
of " Tlie Shepherd's Well." Some are printed with his 
name, some not ; but they are all of one family. This 
gentleman has attempted to introduce real-life, common- 
place colloquial dialogue into tragedy, — not as prose 
tragedy, but in llie form of verse. Whatever ability he 
may display in the conception of subjects, we certainly 
think that his method of execution uefeats the design. 
The perfectly domestic drama should be presented in a 
perfectly domestic form. Rapidity of production is also 
apt to degenerate into reckless impulse. A tragedy at 
three sittings appears to be Mr. Powell's rate of work»- 
Five mortal acts as a few hours' amusement ! But they 
are not acts. They are interludes to display a catastro- 
phe. 'IMiese productions have the merit of one idea; 
and sometimes a very fine and striking one it would 
prove, if properly worked out ; but having reserved this 
idea for the last scene of his last act, the author seems 
to think that any mass of introductory or irrelevant mat- 
ter, may be cut into four parts — and \hen comes Act the 
Fifth, and the one stinging idea. That he has " stufiF" 
in him of a good kind, if fairly worked upon, and with 
any justice done to its own nature, is evident, though it 
may he doubted from these specimens whether he will 
ever be a dramatist. But, in the first place, and in any 
case, we object to the principle of realizing in dramatic 
composition, however admirably the intention were ex- 
ecuted. "The Blind Wife," the " W'ife's Kevenge;"' 
*' Marguerite ;" " Marion," &c., &c., are all instances of 
the error, carried to its extreme, and with a fairness 
that brings the question at once to an issue. It ought 
to be added that the '• Shepherd's Well" is the best of 
Mr. Powell's productions, and not only has ?\ne ele- 
ments of t'eeling and purpose in its conception, but is ex- 
ecuted in a style of more care and poetical refinement 
than any of the rest of his large " young family," It is 
a great pity that six months' labour was not bestowed 
upon so finely conceived a subject. 

That a composition intended for the stage, which was 
the second production of Mr. Browning, should be very 
ditferent from an epic or psychological poem, will ex- 
cite no surprise ; but that it should contain so few inci- 



^86 ROBERT BROWNING 

dental touches of that pecuhar genius which he had pre- 
viously displayed, is a curious circumstance to remark. 
Paracelsus was an ebullition of the poet's powers. The 
tragedy of " Strafford" is a remarkable instance of the 
suppression of them. It was a strange mistake, with 
regard to the tragic principle, which needs the highest 
consummation of poetry and passion, so that each shall 
be either or both ; whereas " Strafford" was a piece of 
passionate action with the bones of poetry. It was a 
maimed thing, all over patches and dashes, with the 
light showing through its ribs, and the wind whistling 
through its arms and legs ; while in its head and echo- 
ing in its heart, was sung its passion for a king. It was 
printed as " acted." What it might have been original- 
ly is impossible to say, but we have some difficulty in 
•conceiving how it could have been put together with so 
many disjointed pieces in the first instance. The num- 
ber of dashes and gaps of omission made its pages often 
resemble a Canadian field in winter, after a considera- 
ble thoroughfare of snow-shoes. It appeared, however, 
to please Mr. Macready, and it was played by him ap- 
propriately during several nights. 

But it is ever the " trick of genius" to do something 
which we do not expect; and turning to the series, is- 
sued under the pretty and most unsatisfactory title of 
" Bells and Pomegranates," we discover Mr. Browning 
to possess the finest dramatic genius. " King Victor 
and King Charles" is a complete tragedy. It appears in 
the form of two main divisions, each of which is also di- 
vided into two parts, yet presenting one entire and per- 
fectly united drama. It is properly a tragedy in four 
acts, with the interval of about a twelvemonth between 
the second and third. The characters are drawn with 
a fine and masterly hand, and the scenes in which they 
appear are full of nice shades and gradations, and subtle 
casuistries of the passions, and are not only dramatic in 
an intellectual sense, but would be so to the feeling and 
to the eye, if duly represented. \ It is another proof, 
among the many already existing, that the unacted 
drama is incomparably superior to the melodramatic 
plays and farces adopted by managers""^) 

The action in "King Victor and King Charles" is so 
finely intervolved, though so very clear to the under- 
standing, and its scenes are so thoroughly dependent 



AND J. W. MARSTON. 28T 

upon each other, even for ordinary effect, that extracts 
can do no justice to its artistic structure. 

The same author's tragedy of the " Return of the 
Druses" is, in conception, still finer. The main requi- 
sites for a successful acting tragedy are character and 
passionate action — and these the " Druses" possesses 
in the highest degree ; the next requisite is the perspic- 
uous distribution of the action — and here this tragedy is 
deficient, but in a way that might easily be remedied, 
aud with far less trouble than is always taken with the 
works of Mr. Knowles, or Sir E. L. Bulwer, or with 
any of the " great discoveries" and failures of Mr. Mac- 
ready. The character of Djabal is a masterpiece, and 
of the highest order of dramatic portraiture. It is at 
once complicated and clear ; the motives intervolved 
and conflicting, yet " palpable to feehng as to sight ;" 
and all his actions, their results, and his ov/n end, are 
perfectly in harmony with these premises. Anything 
in him that puzzles us, is only in the progress of the 
drama; for eventually he stands out in the finest relief^ 
as though upon " the mountain," to which his dying 
steps lead on his emancipated people. 

Of a similar kind in design and structure to " The Pa- 
trician's Daughter," is the poem of " Gerald," by the 
same author. It is another form of the idea of a man 
of genius struggling with the world of the present time. 
The scenes are laid in such places as H5^de Park, the 
High Road, at Bayswater, &c., and the language having 
a strong smack of the olden time. The poem may be 
designated as a narrative dialogue and reverie, in which 
a series of emotions and thoughts, and a few events, are 
brought before us. They are all very like private ex- 
periences poetized, philosophized, and moralized upon. 
It may also be doubted whether the author's faculties 
have attained their maturity, judging by the love he has 
for displaying his good things in Italics, evidently show- 
ing that he considers the ideas as very new, which they 
frequently are not, though perhaps expressed in a novel 
form. But the gravest fault is of the same kind as that 
in his previous work, viz., the author gives us no proof 
that his hero is a man of genius. Gerald says : 

" In my solitude. 
While bending o'er the page of bards, to feel 
Their greatness fiU my soul, and albeit then 
The lofty meaning I could scarce translate, 
To quiver with an awful, vague delight, 



288 EGBERT BROWNING 

And find my heart respond, although no sense 
Outran my thought ! Wliat, shall no harvest burst 
From seed like this^" — Gerald, p. II. 

We answer, " very likely not any." If any, then 
most likely a reproduction of the thoughts of others, 
the seeds of which have inspired him. All thai he, snys 
in proof of an impuN^e and capacity, is in itself only 
poetical emotion, which should not be mistaken (as it 
always is in youth) for poetical genius. Gerald leaves 
his home feeling a strong impulse to do something great 
in the world. Here at once we see the old sad error— 
a vague aspiration or ambition mistaken for an object 
and a power. A man of genius rushes out of his soli- 
tude, or takes some extreme step, because he is pos- 
sessed with a ruling passion — a predominating idea — 
a conviction that he can accomplish a particular thing, 
and so relieve his breast of the ever-smouldering image 
' — his imagination of the ever-haunting thought. He 
does not rush forth with expanded arms to grasp at 
"whatever presents itself to his inflamed desires, but to 
grasp his soul's idol. In like manner — to come down 
to details — a man of genius never snatches a pen, and 
sits down to write whatever comes uppermost (or if he 
do so, now and then, it is because he is in a morbid 
state, and will most likely burn what he has written); 
but to write down a sudden revelation of a definite kind. 
We think that towards the close of his work Mr. Mars- 
ton discovered this ; in fact, we see signs that he did; 
but it was too late, and all he could do was to make his 
hero accuse himself of a selfish ambition as an excuse 
for his want of success. 

So much for these heroes ; but that the author of both 
these works is a man of genius, and one of the moving 
spirits of the time, no doubt can exist. Mr. Marston's 
"Vritings are full of thoughtful beauty, of religious aspi- 
ration, and affectionate tenderness. He has also ac- 
quired considerable reputation as a lecturer, and is in 
other respects likely to have a prosperous career before 
him — a career which at present he has not commenced 
in that fullness of strength which we anticipate he will 
shortly develope. 

Having spoken of the realizing attempts of Mr. Pow- 
ell with regard to the drama, it will be only justice 
merely to remark, that this is not the case with his 
other poetical productions. He possesses much talent 
in lyrical composition, and his poems of the aflfeclions 



AND J. W. MARSTON. 289 

have great beauty. Many of the other pieces are of a 
very restless and unequal description. They breathe 
too much of death, and a morbid harping upon religious 
forms and dogmas. If we were to select those which 
we like best, they would be from among his smaller 
poems of a few stanzas each ; and we could pick out 
many sonnets, which are excellent in thought, imagery, 
and harmonious versification. His longer poems want 
design and order — to say nothing of some care and con- 
sistency. For instance, in his poem entitled " A Dream 
of Arcadi," he thinks proper to see a splendid cathedral, 
to hear a fine organ and anthems, and to delight his 
senses with the fumes of incense, amidst crowds of dev- 
otees. High-mass in Arcadia! For the rest, however, 
every one must feel the presence of the spirit of poetry, 
and of religious sensibility; nor can any confusion of 
time, place, form, and of purpose (or the want of pur- 
pose), prevent that sympathy which follows even the 
wildest touch upon the chords of universal emotion. 

To that somewhat extensive class of readers who are 
■of opinion that poetry, so far from being a thing to study, 
should be so plain, that " all who run may read," and 
who take up the works of Mr. Browning with that view, 
we should premise that they might just as well run an- 
other way. In " Paracelsus" the diflficulties were in 
the quantity and quality of thought ; in " Sordello" there 
is the additional difficulty of an impracticable style. In 
proportion to the depth or novelty of a thought, the poet 
has chosen to render the vehicle difficult in which it is 
conveyed — sometimes by its erudite elaboration of pa- 
renthesis within parenthesis, and question upon query — 
sometimes by its levity, jaunting indifference, and ap- 
parent contempt of everything — sometimes it has an 
interminable period, or one the right end of which you 
cannot find ; a knotted serpent, which either has no dis- 
coverable tail, or has several, the ends of which are in 
the mouths of other serpents, or else flanking in the air 
• — sometimes it has a series of the shortest possible 
periods, viz., of one word, or of two or three words. 
And amidst ail this there is at frequent intervals a dark 
hailstone shower of proper names — names of men and 
women, and places, and idealities, with which only one 
general reader in about twenty thousand can be ex- 
pected to be familiar, and with the whole of which the 
style of the poet seems courteously to assume that all 
B B 



290 ROBERT BROWNING 

his readers are upon the most famihar terms possible. 
Under these circumstances it can be no wonder that 
such of the miscellaneous public as take up a poem by 
■vvay of a little relaxation shrunk back in hopeless dis- 
may ; nor that the more numerous class of daily and 
weekly critics, whose judgments are, from the very na- 
ture of their position, compelled in most cases to be as 
hasty as their hands, which " write against time," should 
have been glad to dismiss " Sordello" with an angry 
paragraph. In a few instances the critics appeared to 
have read a portion of it ; in the great majority of in- 
stances it was not read at all, which fact was evident 
in the notice, and in several instances was boldly de- 
clared by the irate critic as a task beyond his sublunary 
powers. And this no doubt was true. 

" Who will, may hear Sordello's story told : 
His story ?" 

The author is bewitched at the very outset with an 
inability to "get on with his story;" and he never 
recovers this bad beginning. The historical ground- 
plan of the work is laid down after a most bewildering 
fashion : 

" So Guelfs i-ebuilt 
Their houses ; not a drop of blood was spilt 
When Cino Bocchimpane chanced to meet 
Buccio Virtil ; God's wafer, and the street 
Is narrow ! Tutti Santi, think, a-swarm 
With Ghibellins, and yet he took no harm. 
This could not last. Off Saling-uerra went 
To Padua, Podesta," &c.—SordeUo, p. 7. 

Adding to the vague or conflicting historical accounts 
whatever fictions were agreeable to his fancy, the poet 
has thus successfully succeeded in bewildering himself 
and his readers, amidst the elaborate webs of all man- 
ner of real and ideal events and biographies. Whether 
to the purpose of his psychologically digressive narra- 
tive, or merely as an association suggested (to himself)' 
by the last remark he has made, he never lets you off. 
Speaking of Adelaide, and the Kaiser's gold, and Monk 
Hilary, w^ho is on his knees — 

" Now, sworn to kneel and pray till God shall please 
Exact a punishment for many things 
You know and some you never knew ; wJiich brings 
To memory, Azzo's sister Beatrix 
And Richard's Giglia are my Alberic's 
And Ecelin's betrathed ; the Count himself 
Must get my Palma: Ghibellin and Guelf 
Mean to embrace each other. So begaa 
Romano's missive to his fighting-man 



a?;d j. w. marston. 291 

Taxirello on the Tuscan's death, away 

With Friedrich sworn to sail from Naples' bay 

Next month for Syria." — iSordsllo, p. 81. 

Intending to say several things in token of admira- 
tion, amidst all the oft'-hand severities of contempora- 
ries that have been vented upon " Sordell(),"il neverthe- 
less seemed right to display some of the heaviest faults 
of the poem at the outset. Having done this unspa- 
ringly, the far more pleasant, even though the far more 
arduous task remains. The following are offered as 
opinions and impressions of the work, regarding it as a 
whole : — 

The poem of " Sordello" is an attempt to carry out 
the impossible design in which the author's previous 
hero, "Paracelsus," had so admirably failed, it is as 
though the poet, having created a giant, whose inevita- 
ble fall in the attempt to scale the heavens had been so 
fully explained, was resolved himself to follow in the 
same track with all the experience and power thus de- 
rived ; and, moreover, with the consciousness of being 
the real and vital essence which had called that ideal- 
ism into existence, and less likely, therefore, to ''go 
off" into fine air, not being amenable to the same laws. 
Sordello takes up the asbestos lamp from the inmost 
chamber of the tomb of Paracelsus, and issues forth 
with it into the world, being already far on the way to- 
wards the outlet which leads to other worlds, or states 
of being, and perhaps to the borders of infinity. Para- 
celsus, while dying, came to the conviction that men 
were already beginning " to pass their nature's bounds ;" 
that a fine instinct guided them beyond the power of 
mere knowledge or experience, and that they were — 

"all ambitious, upwards tending-, 

Like plants in mines, which never saw the sun, 
But dream of him and guess where he may be, 
And do their best to climb and get to him." 

He had, moreover, a sentient perception, "beyond, 
the comprehension of our narrow thought, but some- 
how felt and known in every shift and change of the 
spirit within — of what God is, of what we are, and what 
life is." Now, we should reply to Paracelsus, and to 
all who, like him, have suffered their imaginative sensi- 
bilities to reason them into such notions, that they de- 
ceive themselves, although the truth is in them. Full, 
however, of this sublime deception, Sordello tunes his 
harp, and works through all the complicated chords and 



292 ROBERT BROWNING 

mazes of harmony with indefatigable zeal, from the 
first note to the end. In the last book of " Sordello" we 
find him ahnost using the same expressions as in the 
last book of "Paracelsus." Here we learn that his 
truth— 

" Lig^hted his old life's every shift and change, 
Effort with counter-effort ; nor the range 
Of each looked wrong except wherein it checked 
Some other — which of these could he suspect 
Prying into them by the sudden blaze ? 
The real way seemed made up of all the ways — 
Mood after mood of the one mind in him ; 
Tokens of the existence, bright or dim. 
Of a transcendent all-embracing sense 
Demanding only outward influence, 
A soul, in Palma's phrase, above his soul. 
Power to uplift his power," &c.— Sordello, p. 217, 218. 

Exactly so : he only wants that very thing which has 
been denied to mortality since the beginning of things. 
Despairing of this, and doubting whether any external 
power in nature be adequate to forward his desire, Sor- 
dello finally moots the question of whether he may be 
ordained a prouder fate — " a law to his own sphere"?" 
Sordello dies, and the whole amount of his transcend- 
ental discoveries may be summed up in the poet's ■ 
question — 

" What has Sordello found ?" 

To which no reply is given. 

Such is the most simplified account the present stu- 
dent can offer of the main object of the poem of '' Sor- 
dello," carved out from the confused " story," and 
broken, mazy, dancing sort of narrative no-outline, 
which has occasioned so much trouble, if not despair, 
to his most patient and pains-taking admirers. Some 
have thought that the general purport of the poem was 
to show that mere material things and matters of fact 
were a mistaken object of life, only leading to disap- 
pointment and sorrow; and that in the ideal world 
alone, true contentment, satisfaction, and happiness 
were to be found ; others have contended, on the con- 
trary, that it is intended to display the impossibility of 
attaining to a knowledge of the essences of things, that 
a life passed amidst idealisms is one of inutility and 
sorrow, and that the true object of man should be to 
discover and attain the best realities. But a third view- 
suggests itself. It is probable that Sordello is not de- 
voted to either of the above purposes exclusively, but 



AND J. W. MARSTON. 293 

comprising both, displays the hopes and the despairs, 
the vakie and the inutility of boih, when foUowed with 
the devotion of the whole being. The selection is left 
to the reader's individual nature, in such propurloins as 
may accord with that nature. 

As to the poetry of " Sordello," apart from all these 
disquisitions, we think it abounds with beauties. We 
should offer as one instance (it cannot be extracted on 
account of its length) the matchless description of the 
poetical mind of the noblest order, as typified in Sor- 
dello, from the bottom of page 20 to the top of page 2-5. 
Of the childhood of Sordello, a beautiful description is 
given,— at p. 26-28. 

The complex working of the youthful mind of the 
poet is illustrated in a very happy manner : 

" Thus thrall reached thrall ; 
He o'er-festooning every interval 
As the adventurous spider, making light 
Of distance, shoots her threads from depth to height, 
From barbican to battlement ; so flung 
Fantasies forth and in their centre swung 
Our architect." 

Sordello, p. 29. 

At page 69, there are several passages highly illus- 
trative of some of our previous remarks on the philoso- 
phy of " Sordello ;" but the simple matter-of-fact beauty 
of the following must be apparent to the reader: 

" In Mantua-territory half is slough, 
Half pine-tree forest ; maples, scarlet-oaks 
Breed o'er the river beds ; even Mincio chokes 
With sand the summer through ; but 'tis morass 
In winter up to Mantua walls." 

Sordello, p. 17. 

The whole of page 39 might be quoted for its pastoral 
loveliness. 

Containing, as it does, so many passages of the finest 
poetry, no manner of doubt can exist but that " Sordel- 
lo" has been hitherto treated with great injustice. It 
has been condemned in terms that would lead any one 
to suppose there was nothing intelligible throughout the 
whole poem. We have shown its defects in detail, and 
we have also shown that it has some of the highest 
beauties. The style, the manner, the broken measure, 
the recondite form ; these have constituted still greater 
difficulties than even the recondite matter of which it 
treats — though the latter only were quite enough to 
" settle" or " unsettle" an ordinary reader. 
B b2 



294 ROBERT BROWNING 

But how speak of the poem synthetically — how re- 
view it as a whole'? In what terms shall we endeav- 
our to express the sum of our impressions of thousands 
of verses poured forth, as Sordeilo says, "by a mad im- 
pulse nothing justified, short of Apollo's presence V 
In sobriety of language it is not to be done, save most 
unfittingly. In what fine rapture, then, shall we seek 
to lose our mere critical faculties, and resign ourselves 
to the swift and wayward current of the verse; now 
basking in its brilliancy, now merged in its profound 
shadows, at one time whirled in a vortex, and the next 
moment cast upon some vast shelving strand, glistening 
all over with fiints, and diamonds, and broken shells, 
where strange amphibious creatures crawl, and stare, 
or wink, while the song of Sordeilo passes over our pros- 
trate head, and we have to scramble up and stagger 
after the immortal quire, vainly catching at the torn and 
cast-off segments of their flickering skirts 1 We hurry 
on in fond yet vain pursuit, when suddenly a Guelf and 
Ghibellin appear before us, each with an enormous urn 
of antique mould, which they invert above our tingling 
cranium, and instantly we are half extinguished and 
quite overwhelmed by a dark shower of notes and 
memoranda from Tiraboschi, Nostradamus, the Latin 
treatise of Dante, the Chronicle of Rolandin, the Com- 
ments on the sixth Canto of the Purgatorio, by Benve- 
nuto d'Imola, and all the most recondite hints from the 
most learned and minute biographical lexicogpiphers of 
the old Italian periods. 

The poem of " Sordeilo" is a beautiful globe, which, 
rolling on its way to its fit place among the sister 
spheres, met with some accident which gave it such a 
jar that a multitude of things half slipt into each other's 
places. It is a modern hieroglyphic, and should be 
carved on stone for the use of schools and colleges. 
Professors of poetry should decypher and comment upon, 
a few lines every morning before breakfast, and young 
students should be ground upon it. It is a fine mental 
exercise, whatever may be said or thought to the con- 
trary. Here and there may be found passages equal to 
the finest things that were ever written, and are not 
more difficult to the understanding than those same 
finest things. It is also full of passages apparently con- 
structed with a view to make the general reader rage 
and foam, if ever a general reader should push forth liis 



AND J. W. MARSTON. 295 

adventurous boat out of sight of the shore of the first 
page — and out of sight it will surely appear to him be- 
fore he has doubled the storm-rejoicnig cape of page 
four. To some it will appear to be a work addressed to 
the perception of a seventh sense, or of a class of facul- 
ties which we do not at present know that we possess 
— if we really do possess. To others it will seem to be 
a work written in the moon by the only sane individual 
of that sphere, viz., the man of that ilk ; or a work writ- 
ten by a poet somewhere in the earth by the light of a 
remote sun whose rays are unrevealed to other eyes. 
To some the most vexatious part of it will be the count- 
less multitude of little abrupt snatches of questions, 
snaps of answers, and inscrutable exclamations, chirp- 
ing around from every branch of a wilderness or a jun- 
gle of glimmering mysteries. To others the continual 
consciousness of the reader's presence will most annoy, 
because it destroys the ideal life, and reminds him of 
something far less agreeable — himself, and his diairact- 
ing problem ! The flowing familiar style sometimes re- 
minds us of Shelley's "Julian and Maddalo" with a 
touch of Keats' " Endymion," broken up into numerous 
pit-falls, whether mines of thought or quirks of fancy; 
but there are also other occasions when it becomes 
spiral, and of sustained inspiration, not unlike certain 
parts of the " Prometheus Unbound" put into rhyme ; 
yet is it no imitation of any other poet. Certain por- 
tions also remind us of the suggestive, voluble, discon- 
nected, philosophical jargon of Shakspeare's fools, and 
with all the meaning which they often have for those 
who can find it. The poem is thick-sown throughout 
with suggestions and glances of history and biography, 
of dark plots, tapestried chambers, eyes behind the ar- 
ras, clapping doors, dreadful galleries, and deeds in the 
dark, over which there suddenly bursts a light from on 
high, and looking up you find a starry shower, as from, 
some remote rocket, descending in silent brilliancy upon 
the dazzled page. Each book is full of gems set in puz- 
zles. It is like what the most romantic admirers of 
Goethe insist upon " making out" that he intended in his 
simplest fables. It is the poetical portion of three ep- 
ics, shaken together in a sack and emptied over the 
hand of the intoxicated reader. It is a perfect store- 
house of Italian scenery and exotic fruits, plants, and 
flowers ; so much so, that by the force of contrast it 



£96 ROBERT BROWNING AND J. W. MARSTON. 

brings to mind the half-dozen flowers and pastoral com- 
mon-places in collections of " Beauties of English 
Poets," till the recollection of the sing-song repetitions 
makes one almost shout with laughter. It is pure Ital- 
ian in all its materials. There is not one drop of Brit- 
ish ink in the whole composition. Nay, there is no ink 
in it, for it is all written in Tuscan grape juice, em- 
browned by the sun. It abounds in things addressed to 
a second sight, and we are often required to see double in 
order to apprehend its meaning. The poet may be con- 
sidered the Columbus of an impossible discovery. It is 
a promised land, spotted all over with disappointments, 
and yet most truly a land of promise, if ever so rich and 
rare a chaos can be developed into form and order by 
revision, and its southern fulness of tumultuous heart 
and scattered vineyards be ever reduced to given pro- 
portion, and wrought into a shape that will fit the aver- 
age mental vision and harmonize with the more equable 
pulsations of mankind. 



SIR EDWARD LYTTON BULWER. 

" Pitch thy project high I 

Sink not in spirit. Who aimeth at the sky- 
Shoots higher much than if he meant a tree. 
Let thy nund still be beut, still plotting where, 
And when, and how, the business may be done." 

George Herbert. 

B " whom all the Graces taught to please, 

Mixed mirth with morals, eloquence with ease. 
His genius social, as his judgment clear ; 
When frolic, prudent ; smiling when severe. 
Secure each temper and each taste to hit, 
His was the curious happiness of wit." — Mallet. 

It should be remembered to the honour of Sir E. L. 
Bulvver, that although born to an independence and to 
the prospect of a fortune, and inheriting by accident of 
birth an advantageous position in society, he has yet 
cultivated his talent with the most unremitting assidui- 
ty, equal to that of any " poore scholar," and has not 
suffered his " natural gifts" to be smothered by indo- 
lence or the pleasures of the world. He is one of the 
most prolific authors of our time ; and his various ac- 
complishments, habits of research, and extraordinary 
industry, no less than his genius, well entitle him to the 
rank he holds as one of the most successful, in that 
branch of literature in which he eminently excels. We 
must not be dazzled by his versatility; we entertain no 
doubts about his real excellence, and shall endeavour to 
fix his true and definite position. 

Sir Edward Lytton Bulwer is the youngest son of 
General Bulwer, of Heydon Hall, in the county of Nor- 
folk, and of EHzabeth, daughter and heiress of Henry 
Warburton Lytton, Esq., of Knebworth Park, Herts, to 
the possession of which estate he has just succeeded; 
and is connected on botli sides of the house, with many 
noble and ancient families. He sat in parliament at an 
early age for the borough of St. Ives, and subsequently 
for the city of Lincoln. His parliamentary career was 
highly creditable, and in one respect, in especial, has 
left an honourable testimonial to his exertions ; we al- 
lude to the bill for the protection of dramatic copyright, 



298 SIR EDWARD LYTTON BULWER. 

■which he brought in and carried. He distinguished 
himself at the same time as an able political writer. As 
a speaker, he had won the respect of the House, though 
his voice is weak, his manner somewhat hesitating, 
and his style more florid than accords with the taste of 
that assembly. His train of argument surmounted these 
disadvantages, and, what was more difficult still, induced 
honourable members to overlook a certain appearance 
of fastidious nicety in dress, which by no means accords 
with their notions in general. He was made a baronet ; 
the date and occasion of which event we forget. His 
political labours interfered not in the least with his 
literary career, to the progress of which we now turn. 

The development of his literary taste is ascribed to 
the influence of his mother, to whose charge he was 
early consigned by his father's death. The " Percy's 
Eeliques" was a favourite book of his childhood, and he 
wrote some ballads in imitation, when only five or six 
years old. He was never sent to any public school, but 
graduated at Cambridge. He, however, found for him- 
self a kind of education, — which was probably of more 
importance to the development of genius than any he 
received in the University, — by wandering over the 
greater part of England and Scotland on foot during the 
long vacation, and afterwards making a similar tour of 
France on horseback. He began to publish when only 
two or three and twenty, at first in verse ; next anony- 
j mously a novel now forgotten, entitled " Falkland." It 
I hence appears that his early attempts were failures. 
xj .His first successful work was " Pelhani," and this es- 
tablished his reputation as a clever novelist. It was 
rapidly followed by " The Disowned," by " Devereux ;" 
and then by " Paul ClifTord," which stamped him as a 
man of genius. " Eugene Aram" well sustained the 
high reputation thus gained. 

There was a considerable interval between these two 
fine works last named, and the other novels and roman- 
ces of their author, in which he undertook the editorship 
of the " New Monthly Magazine." His own papers, of 
which he wrote many, were various in subject; some- 
times political, sometimes literary criticism. A series 
entitled " The Conversations of an Ambitious Student" 
was in general devoted to abstract speculation. The 
best of these were afterwards re-published under the 
title of "The Student." The germ of many of the 



SIR EDWARD LYTTON BULWER. 299 

thoughts embodied and developed in these papers be- 
longs to Hazlitt ; but the germ has power and life suffi- 
cient to bear the branching stems and foliage with which 
it was elaborated by Bulwer, and in a manner that was 
often wortiiy of it. If the saying attributed to Sir Lyt- 
ton Bulwer concerning his editorship is true, it belongs 
to that " dandiacal" portion of him, which disagreeably 
interferes with one's confidence in his sincerity ; for if 
he said he became an Editor " to show that a gentleman 
xnight occupy such a position," it must simply be set 
down to the same Beau-Brummel idiosyncrasy which 
makes him seriously careful of the cut of his coat, and 
the fashion of his waistcoat. But it was only a " flour- 
ish of the queue,''- whoever said it. The motive was 
more worthy ; and if a proof were wanting, the papers 
of the " Student" might be referred to, in which the- 
aim is always high and pure. " England and the Eng- 
lish," was more the work of the man of the world, and 
the member of Parliament, superadded to the thinker. 
No doubt it contains some exaggerations, but it is cor- 
rect in the main, and is an admirably applied and much 
required dose for our overweening conceit of our na- 
tional prejudices and pride. It might have been enti- 
tled " An Exposition of the Influences of Aristocracy." 

A return to the region of fiction was perhaps accel- 
erated by a tour on the Continent. Passing over the 
" Pilgrims of the Rhine," a piece of prettiness in litera- 
ture beautifully illustrated, — a work which, to use ap- 
propriate language, a perfect gentleman might permit 
himself to write for a thousand pounds — we see Sir 
Lytton Bulwer in his own element again upon the pub- 
lication of his " Last Days of Pompeii ;" followed by" 
" Rienzi," and, at intervals wonderfully short, by " Er- 
nest Maitravers," "Alice," "Night and Morning," " Za- 
noni," and " The Last of the Barons." 

Had the author of these works — giving evidence of a 
range and variety of intellect, invention, and genius suf- 
ficient to satisfy a high ambition — attempted no other 
walk of genius, he would have stood above and beyond 
the analytical portion of criticism, and commanded its 
far more worthy and genial office of synthetical appre- 
ciation of excellence. But he has aimed at the fame of 
a poet, and a dramatist, besides. Those who are used 
to think of Sir Lytton Bulwer as a uniformly successful 
author; a sort of magician under whose wand paper 



300 SIR EDWARD LYTTON BULWER. 

will always turn into gold, do not know that several al- 
ready forgotten poems have been put forth by him since 
his acquirement of popularity, the very names of which 
sound strange. " Ismael, an Oriental Tale," " Leila, or 
the Siege of Granada," " The Siamese Twins" have 
gone into forgetfulness, and " Eva and other poems and 
tales," are not destined to a long life. Then there have 
been patriotic songs, and odes, in which there was a cu- 
rious mixture of the roast-beef of Old England style, 
with an attempt at imaginative impulse and intensity of 
meaning, depending chiefly for high personifications and 
abstract qualities upon the use of capital letters. More- 
over, there was a tragedy of " Cromwell" which is said 
to have been re-written, and its design and character 
totally changed while it was going through the press : 
and finally, after it was printed, it was suppressed. 
*' The public was not worthy of it," — we heard this inti- 
mated. But there were some few intellects alive who 
were ; and they could not obtain it. Besides, the public 
has many good things of which it is not worthy, as a 
mass ; and yet, here and there, the right sort of man al- 
ways picks up the right sort of book to his thinking. 

That there are great elements of popular success, and 
a mastery of the worldly side of it, in Sir Lytton Bul- 
wer, is undoubted; nor would it in the least surprise us 
if he became a peer of the realm, sometime within the 
next ten 3'ears ; nevertheless there are several other 
things which he cannot accomplish. 
^ The known dramatic works of Sir Lytton Bulwer con- 
sist of " The Duchess de la Valliere," " The Lady of 
Lyons," " Richelieu," " The Sea Captain," and " Mon- 
ey," all brought out on the stage by Mr. IMacready. 
The first was deservedly a failure. Of the others, one 
only retains a share of popularity, but its share is a large 
one. " The jLady of Lyons" is a decided favourite with 
the public. ^Jit is usual to place its author among the 
first of modern dramatists, which he decidedly is not, as 
well as among the first of our novelists, which he assu- 
redly IS, of whatever period. 

The charm of the " Lady of Lyons" results from the 
interest of tlie plot, the clear and often pathetic working 
of the story, the easy flow of the dialogue, the worldly 
morality, and the reality of the action, just sufficiently 
clothed in an atmosphere of poetry to take it out of the 
mere prose of existence, without calling upon the ima- 



SIR EDWx\RD LYTTON BULWER. 301 

ginatioii for any effort to comprehend it. All this, 
united with every advantage that scenic effect and ex- 
cellent acting could give, established the " Lady of Ly- 
ons" in a popularity which it has always retained. But 
this alone is not the mede of a great dramatist. The 
plot of the play in question will not bear examination 
by any high standard. A heart is treacherously won; 
then, when after the cruel conflict with its own just in- 
dignation, it is ready to forgive all and continue true to 
its love, it is deserted with cruelty as great as the for- 
mer treachery, all because a self-loving notion of " hon- 
our" demands the sacrifice. The old false preference 
of the shadow for the substance ! Then, at last, when 
honour is satisfied all is right. It is made right by the 
lover having been to battle, and "fought away" and ob- 
tained rank and property. In the last scene he literally 
purchases the lady — the price passing before her very 
face. This is fostering our worst faults ; exciting sym- 
pathy for the errors that are among the most prolific 
sources of " the weariness, the fever, and the fret" of 
our life. 

" Money" had a better purpose, was more clever and 
witty, and was superior in its structure ; but while the 
power of money, and all its undue influence in the 
world, was excellently displayed, the ostensible and 
popular moral tendency of the play was to encourage 
the acquisition as a legitimate and honourable means 
for attaining objects of all kinds, — a triumph of the 
purse over every thought and feeling. The author 
shows his contempt for this condition of the world; but 
only meets it upon its own ground, instead of taking a 
higher. It was very successful at first, but is now sel- 
dom acted. " Richelieu" had also a " run" on its first 
appearance; but has never since been represented. 

'The character of Sir Lytton Bulwer's mind is analyt- 
ical, rather than impulsive ; elaborate and circuitous, 
rather than concentrating and direct ; fanciful rather 
than imaginative ; refining and finishing, rather than 
simple and powerful; animated and vivid, rather than 
passionate and fiery. He constructs upon system, rather 
than upon sensation ; and works by his model, and with 
little help from instinct. His strongest faith is in the 
head, not in the heart ; and for these reasons he is not a 
great dramatist. Nor can all the labour and skill in the 
world make him one. But he is philosophical and artis- 
C c 



302 SIR EDWARD LYTTON BULWER. 

tical, and is pretty sure to display both intellect and 
Gkill in whatever he undertakes. 

Sir Edward Lytton Bulwer is a great novelist; his 
name will rank among the masters in the art, and his 
works will live together with theirs. It is sufficient to 
mention the names of such compositions as " Paul Clif- 
ford," " Eugene Aram," " Night and Morning," " Ernest 
Maltravers" — with its sequel of" Alice" — an4 " Zanoni," 
to feel fearless in making this assertion. ^The variety 
and originality displayed in these fine works ; the inven- 
tion ; the practical knowledge, and clever working of 
character; the fine art in the management of the plot; 
the elegance of the style ; the power over the feelings in 
deep pathos; all these qualities combine to place their 
author in the highest rank of this department of litera- 
ture. 

In calling to mind the list of Bulwer's novels, those we 
have mentioned occurred first as masterpieces, but oth- 
ers remain behind to which other tastes may give the 
preference. ^' Pelham" has never been a favourite with 
us, notwithstanding its decided superiority to its con- 
temporary " fashionable novels." We cannot relish 
philosophy or abstract speculation (and we grant these 
in " Pelham") from the same mouth which discusses 
the fopperies of the toilette, and how to make a pair of 
trousers ! " A fine gentleman" is not to our taste, and 
there is quite enough worldly morality in the actual 
world without putting it down in a book, as a good thing 
•worth repeating. "The last Days of Pompeii," wove 
into a story of deep interest and beauty, the memories 
of the classic times ; and the character of Nydia, the 
l>lind girl, will last as long as our language endures. 
" Rienzi" is, perhaps, the least marked by genius of any 
of its author's later works of fiction. 

Among those first enumerated, "Eugene Aram" is 
distinguished for the development of a great and subtle 
truth. In the dreadful crime into which the benevolent 
and gifted scholar is betrayed at the very moment when 
he is full of ardour for knowledge and virtue, small cav- 
illers are apt to ask, could a benevolent or virtuous na- 
ture act thus 1 — how can it be natural ? We consider 
that the revelations of genius here displayed may fairly 
be said to have recorded a consciousness that in the 
moral as well as the physical frame, " we are fearfully 
and wonderfully made;" that when the instincts and 



SIR EDWARD LYTTON BULWER. 303 

■the passions are over-mastered by the intellect, and 
man resis proudly on his boasted reason alone, he may 
work strange deeds before " high Heaven ;" that he 
must beware of the casuistries of his brain no less than 
the wild workings of his heart, and that the affections 
and passions are the grand purifiers, the master movers, 
the voice of God in the soul, regulating the speculative, 
daring reason, and controlling as well as impelling ac- 
tion. This is to write greatly; to write philosophy and 
history, the physiology of sensation, and aggregate and 
individual truth. 

In '' Ernest Maltravers" is pourtrayed the training of 
genius to the business of life ; a hard task, and accom- 
plished in a truly philosophical spirit. But as examples 
of excellence in his art, as well as of variety in its 
manifestation, we would especially dwell on " Paul 
Clifford," " Night and Morning," and " Zanoni." 

" Paul Clifford" is of the same class as the " Beggars' 
Opera," and worthy to rank with it. While its hero is 
a highwayman, and the lowest characters are introdu- 
ced in it, who have an appropriate dialect, there is no- 
thing in it that could for a moment shock any one of 
real delicacy, and there is a tinge of the ideal wrought 
into the very texture of most of these men which ren- 
ders them interesting to the imagination, as their good 
feeling and honhommie, with the total absence of any- 
thing brutal or gross, reconciles them to the mind, and 
obtains a hold upon the sympathies. But besides being 
individualized, as well as the representatives of classes, 
several of them are also latent satires upon certain 
known men of our time. Some of these are admirable, 
but more especially Old Bags, Fighting Attie, and Pe- 
ter Macgrawler. Long Ned and Augustus Tomlinson 
are exquisite. One of the finest scenes — that of the 
trial, where the judge is the father of the criminal, is 
taken from Mrs. Inchbald. AVith this exception, the 
work in its various parts, and as a whole, is a fine ori- 
ginal. The author does not make his hero admired for 
any one bad quality, but for naturally high qualities in- 
dependent of the worst circumstances. It is a skilful 
work of art, and its moral tendency is noble, healthy, 
tmd full of exhortations to the manful struggle after 
good. 

The character of Philip Beaufort in " Night and Morn- 
ing," is a fine conception, and as finely pourtrayed from 



304 SIR EDWARD LYTTON BULWER. 

the moment that he is first shown a proud and pam- 
pered hoy, imperious in his strength and beauty, on- 
wards through the bitter trials of his " night," till by the 
energy of his will, always kept up to the mark by the 
intensity of his affections, he works his own way to 
clear " morning." His boyhood and youth are carried 
forward on a swelling tide of passion, which is sustain- 
ed to the close of the work, and leaves the mind eleva- 
ted by its contemplation. There is a great variety of 
character in the book : the rapid sketch of the father 
of Philip, and the exquisitely finished portrait of the 
mother, most pathetic in the dignity of her grief; the 
spoilt, gentle, selfish, idolized brother for whom the 
proud Philip works like a menial to be rewarded by in- 
gratitude ; the worldly uncle in high life, and the re- 
spectable uncle in the shopocracy ; all are excellently 
drawn, but the interest is centred in the principal char- 
acter. The story is equally well managed. The plot 
is complicated, yet clearly worked out ; the incidents 
flow much less from outward circumstance than from 
the strong passions and proud will of the hero, by which 
he casts away over and over again the aid that would 
have saved him, rushes into danger and disaster, but at 
length works out his own regeneration, chastened and 
purified. The interest never flags; and those who can 
get through these three volumes with dry eyes, must be 
|nade of hard materials. 

/ " Zanoni" is the most harmonious as a work of art, 
'the most imaginative, and the purest and highest in 
moral purpose of any of the works of Bulwer. A cer- 
tain peculiarity of style has laid it open to the charge 
of imitation, and many of the ideas and sentiments gath- 
ered from Plato, from Schiller, Richter, and Goethe, 
have induced superficial readers to term it a compila- 
tion. Sir Lytton Bulwer has been heard to declare his 
opinion that it was quite fair to take anything from an 
older author — if you could improve it.. This opens a 
most dangerous door to human vanity, as it would ex- 
cuse any one to himself, for taking anything. Our au- 
thor must not therefore be surprised if this notion has 
occasionally laid him open to vexatious remarks from 
half-seeing censurers. 'JJotwithstanding any of its ob- 
ligations, " Zanoni" is a truly original work ; a finished 
design ; embodying a great principle and pervaded by 
one leading idea. In the fable of " Zanoni" is depicted 



SIR EDWARD LYTTON BULWER. 305 

the triumph of the sympathetic over the selfish nature ; 
both these terms being understood in their largest sense. 
Under the selfish, being comprised the pleasures of the 
intellect, the clear light of science, the love of the beau- 
tiful, the worship of art ; — under the sympathetic, love 
in its most devoted and spiritual meaning, love losing 
the sense of self, stronger than life and death, rendering 
sacrifice easy, hallowing sorrow, endowing the soul 
with courage and faith. In order to bring out the prin- 
ciple in the strongest manner some supernatural ma- 
chinery is employed, and the hero is supposed to pos- 
sess the knowledge of ages and the secret of immortality. 
Love is also represented as the means by which the 
mind grasps the beneficent order and harmony of the 
Universe, in which Death is not an exception, but an 
integral part when viewed in connection with Eternity. 
This truth may be attained also by pure reason, but the 
philosophical author has chosen to ascribe it to the in- 
tuitive teaching of pure passion. In like manner, Ten- 
nyson, in his fine poem of " Love and Death," makes 
Love " pierce and cleave'' the gloom in his address to 
Death : 

" Thou art the shadow of life, and as the tree 
Stands in the sun and shadows all beneath, 
So in the light of great eternity 
Life eminent creates the shade of death ; 
The shadow passeth when the tree shall fall, 
But I shall reigu for ever over all." 

In the course of the story there are many valuable 
secondary suggestions and ideas. The new creation 
which opens to the eyes of those who are awakened to 
the grandeur and mystery of things, and seek a higher 
life and knowledge, is beautifully shadowed forth in the 
floating forms of light that seem to fill the air when the 
young aspirant, Glyndon, first inhales the elixir of life ; 
while the dread of " the world," that common world 
which has always followed with its persecution and its 
scorn the best and the noblest, the strikers out of new 
paths, the pioneers and heralds of progression, this 
nameless dread is embodied with singular power in the 
"Dweller of the Threshold." There is more still im- 
plied in this haunter of " first steps." Every new birth 
is ushered in with a pang — every new idea enlarges the 
capacity for pain as well as for pleasure, and who ever 
felt the inspiration of a new and great feeling without 
Cc2 



306 SIR EDWARD LYTTON BULWER. 

trembling] The following passage contains the ima- 
gery to which we have alluded : 

" And now he distinctly saw shapes somewhat resembling' in outline those 
of the human form, gliding slowly and with regular evolutions through 
the cloud. As they moved in majestic order, he heard a low sound — which 
each caught and echoed from the other ; a low sound, but musical, which 
seemed the chant of some unspeakably tranquil joy. Slowly they glided 
round and aloft, till, in the same majestic order, one after one, they float- 
ed through the casement and were lost in the moonlight ; then, as his eyes 
followed them, the casement became darkened with some oliject indistinguish- 
able at the first gaze, but which sutficed mysteriously to change into ineffable 
horror the delight he had before experienced. By degrees this object shaped 
itself to his sight. It was as that of a human head, coveted with a dark veil, 
through which glared with livid and demoniac fire, eyek that froze the mar- 
row in his bones." / 

This is fearfully beautiful painting. Many could bear 
witness to the truthfulness of its suggestions. Cow- 
ardly fear and distrust give the triumph to this phan- 
tom ; courage and faith alone can conquer it; courage 
to brave danger or disgrace ; faith in the truth, love of 
the beauty and the good to which the mind aspires. 
In the narrative, ihe author has represented the pres- 
ence of this loathsome thing as a necessary part of the 
ordeal which the neophyte must go through ; a presence 
only to be banished by those vvho can firmly confront 
its terrible eyes. It vanishes always before a steady 
gaze. The whole of the supernatural machinery of the 
story is, in like manner, founded on profound truths 
connected with the mysteries of our being. The fabled 
events represent, or are types of. the links of association, 
the sympathies and antipathies, the instincts, smothered 
or left undeveloped in common life by the nature of our 
education, pursuits, and habits, but not the less elemental 
principles of nature. 

The character of Viola, the woman through whom 
Love asserts his pre-eminence — his "reign eternal over 
all" is exquisitely drawn in the first portion of the story. 
Her life as an actress, with the pathetic history of the 
musician Pisani, her father, are especially beautiful. 
The charm of the ideal is thrown over everything con- 
nected with her, and her purity, childlike and spotless, 
combined with her impassioned devotion to Zanoni, the 
hero, render the picture perfect. Out of this lovely 
character, however, arises the grand fault of the work, 
as an ethical harmony. It is the compromise of tier 
passion for Zanoni by her maternal instinct over-mas- 
tering it. When she becomes a mother, she deserts her 
husband for the sake of her child. This is a heresy 



SIR EDWARD LYTTON BULWER. 307 

against a pure and exalted love. It is too true that it 
happens very commonly in real life, but not with such 
a woman, and such a love. It was necessary to the 
course of the story to remove her from her great pro- 
tector, yet some other means should have been invented. 
Deep nature is sacrificed to an immediate requisition of 
the narrative. The mistake is cleverly effected by the 
aid of superstition. But superstition could never have 
been so strong as her love — because, as we have said 
before, a great and ennobling passion is the voice of 
God in the soul, and banishes all weak fears. The ex- 
alted faith of Zanoni, and the heart-broken intensity of 
affection in Viola under the separation, are finely done ; 
and the re-union still finer. They meet again in a dun- 
geon in Paris in the Reign of Terror. Viola is con- 
demned to die, and Zanoni relinquishes his " charmed 
life," his immortality of youth to save her. He leaves 
her asleep when his guards call him to execution. She 
IS unconscious of the terrible sacrifice, but awaking and 
missing him, a vision of the procession to the guillotine 
comes upon her ; Zanoni radiant in his youth and beauty 
is there ; — 

" Oa to the Barriere du Trone I It frowns dark in the air— the g^iant instru- 
ment of murder I One after one to the glaive ; — another, and another, and 
another ! Mercy I O mercy I Is the bridge between the sun and the shades 
so brief? — brief as a sigh ? There — there — his turn has come. ' Die not yet ; 
leave me not behind I Hear me — hear me !' shrieked the inspired sleeper. 
' What I and thou smilest still I' They smiled — those pale lips — and with the 
smile, the place of doom, the headsman, the horror vanished ! With that 
smile, all space seemed suffused in eternal sunshine. Up from the earth he rose 
— he hovered over her — a thing not of matter— an idea of joy and light I Be- 
hind, Heaven opened, deep after deep; and the Hosts of Beauty were seen 
rank upon rank, afar ; and ' Welcome,' in a myriad melodies broke from your 
choral multitude, ye People of the Skies — ' Welcome ! O purified by sacrifice, 
and immortal only through the grave — this it is to die.' And radiant amidst 
the radiant, the image stretched forth its arms, and murmured to the sleeper, 
' Companion of Eternity 1 — this it is to die I' * * * * 

" They burst into a cell , forgotten since the previous morning. They found 
there a young female, sitting upon her wretched bed ; her arms crossed upon 
her bosom, her face raised upward ; the eyes unclosed, and a smile of more 
than serenity, — of bliss upon her lips. Never had they seen life so beautiful ; 
and as they crept nearer, and with noiseless feet, they saw that the lips breath- 
ed not, that the repose was of marble, that the beauty and the ecstasy were 
of death." 

We have quoted this beautiful passage because it 
ought to remain on record, singled out as an example of 
pVire and exalted conception. To those who knew it 
before, it will b^ renewed pleasure; to those who did 
not, an inducement to become acquainted with the work 
from which it is selected. 

It is strange that in a composition which embodies sq 



308 SIR EDWARD LYTTON BULWER. 

much high philosophy, the author should have taken so 
puerile a view of the French Revolution. He dwells 
only on its horrors, — a theme long since exhausted. 
'I'rue, they were many and great; — but slaughterous 
battles for legitimacy, and long ages of despotism, and 
inquisitions, and Sicilian massacres, and massacres of 
Saint Bartholomew, have had their horrors too.* Sir 
Lytton laments over " the throne and the altar !" Words 
of high and very ancient sound ; but what besides words 
were they at that period 1 In a note to a passage in his 
Zanoni, he says, '• Take away murder from the French 
Revolution, and it becomes the greatest farce ever 
played before the angels !" The greatest farce ! — was 
the decrepitude and fall of the altar, then, a farce after 
all — the decripitude and fall of the throne a farce, after 
all — the brutalized vices of the nobles, their despotism 
and ail-but extinction as a nobility — were these things 
only a gieat farce 1 Rather say, the greatest and most 
frightful retribution, the most abused principle, the 
greatest expiatory sacrifice, the most comprehensive 
tragedy — any of these are nearer the mark, historically, 
morally, philosophically, and as matter of human feeling. 
It is from passages such as this, strangely at variance 
■with the philosophical spirit which is unquestionably 
manifested in the writings of this author, that he gives 
an impression of shallowness, and also of insincerity 
and aftectation. Whatever be the cause, it is certain 
that he lays himself open to these charges. Witho/it 
coinciding in the accusation of shallowness, it is fair/to 
say that he cannot pretend to the distinction of an pri- 
ginal or profound thinker, or a discoverer of truth ; but 
it is much to be capable of perceiving and appreciating 
truth when dug up and displayed by others, and this Bul- 
%ver does; he does more, he is able to assimilate it, and 
make it in some respects his own, by giving it new 
forms and colours, all in harmony with itself. His af- 
fectations we take to proceed, partly, from the fact that 
Lis mind does not always keep up to the high mark it 
attains when imbued with the philosophy it is capable 
of comprehending, but does actually disport itself in cer- 
tain fripperies and follies ; and, partly, from the neces- 
sity he is under of displaying no more truth to the 
world than the world can bear with complacency. 

* " Let tliem add to this the fact that seventy-two thousand, persons suffered 
death by the hands of the executioner during- the reign of Henry the Eighth, 
and iudse between, &c." Macaulay's Essays, vol. i., u. 250. 



SIR EDWARD LYTTON BULWER, 309 

An honest-minded reviewer of the works of Sir E. L. 
Bulwer has said of him, " his soul is not brave enough 
for truth." This is scarcely correct : he is brave enough 
to face any truth, but his pohcy holds check upon his 
soul. He knows what a strong bull- headed thing the 
world is, and he loves popularity too well to risk having 
it trampled down by hoofs. He never, therefore, goes 
too far beyond his age ; but he keeps up with it always. 
Hence he maintains his popularity, and perhaps when 
his intellect feels the necessity of reining in, it turns a 
little restive and indulges in some curvets at the expense 
of the "gentle readers" he feels obliged to humour. It 
is further to be admitted that he is essentially aristocrat- 
ic in his tastes and feelings ; that in his writings there is 
no true sympathy with humanity until it is refined and 
polished. Grant this, however, and he is a great writer. 
The true delineation of rough nature must not be expect- 
ed of him. The unpolished diamond he would recognize, 
and turn coldly from jl : nature, with him, requires to be 
perfected — by art. He is prone to idealise all his char- 
acters. With few exceptions they are the reverse of real 
or substantial. Not that we would have them real, but 
with rather a larger portion of reality. His walk, how- 
ever, is the least of all frequented in this age, and he 
pursues it, in general, worthily. 

If Sir Lytton Bulwer had not already established a 
higher reputation, he might have fairly laid claim to dis- 
tinction as an historian from his well studied, classical,, 
and elegant work entitled " Athens, its Rise and Fall ;" 
in which he has occupied the truer and more extensive 
field over which history ought to extend, instead of con- 
fining himself to the mere chronicle of political events,, 
and the vicissitudes of war. The progress of the arts 
and literature of Athens, comprising some fine criticism 
on its drama, are distinguishing features of the two vol- 
umes already published, and its philosophy, social man- 
ners and customs are promised in the two which are to 
complete the work. 

The " Last of the Barons" ought to have been published 
in the form of history, entitled " Chronicles of the Great 
Earl of Warwick," or something equivalent : it would 
have been valuable to all interested in such matters. 
Read as a romance, it is intolerably tedious and heavy, 
and its authenticity and elaborate research are thrown 
away ; — for the question " Is it all true V must contin- 



310 SIR EDWAFvD LYTTON BULWER. 

ually occur, just ascliildren are apt to interrupt the thread 
of a story wiih that inquiry. Doubtless, historical nov- 
els are among the most popular we have, as, for instance, 
ihose of Sir Walter Scott, and " Rienzi," by Bulvi^er 
himself; but, in them, the fiction predominates, in the 
" Last of the Barons," it is the reverse. 

Sir E. L. Bulwer is, in private, a very different and su- 
perior man to the character indicated by the portraits of 
him. That by Chalon, conveys the last infirmities of 
mawkish sentimentality and personal affectation; where- 
as Sir Lytton is very frank, easy, careless (sometimes, 
perhaps, studiously so), good-natured, pleasant, conver- 
sible, and without one lint of those lack-a-daisy qualities 
conferred upon him by the artists. If his sitting had its 
" weak moment," the artist ought not to have copied it, 
but to have taken the best of the truth of the whole man. 

Now, it may be the fact, that nothing would convey so 
complete a conviction to the mind of Sir Lytton of his 
own genius and general talents, and so perfect a sensa- 
tion of inward satisfaction and happiness, as to be seat- 
ed at a table — say in the character of an Ambassador — 
with his fingers covered with dazzling rings, and his feet 
delightfully pinched in a pair of looking-glass boots 
>viih Mother-Shipton heels, while he held a conversation 
with two diplomatic foreigners of distinction, from dif- 
ferent courts, each in his own language ; took up the 
thread of an argument with a philosopher on his right ; 
put in every now and then a capital repartee to the last 
remark of a wit at his left elbow, while at every mo- 
ment's pause he continued three letters lying before him 
— one to the Minister of State for the Home Department, 
one to a friend (inclosing a postscript for his tailor), and 
one on love, containing some exquisite jokes in French 
and Italian on the Platonic Republic — and all those con- 
versations, and arguments, and repartees, and writings, 
continuing at the same time — each being fed from the 
same fount with enough to last till the turn came round. 
And finally, that he should discover the drift of one di- 
plomatist, talk over the other to his views, confute the 
philosopher, silence the court wit, convey the most im- 
portant information to the English Premier, give his 
friend all the advice he asked, and something far more 
subtle besides, (together with the clearest directions and 
fractional measurements in the postscript,) and that the 
love-letter should not only answer every possible pur- 



SIR EDWARD LYTTO?J BULvVEK. 311 

pose of kindliness, delight, amusement and admiration, 
but should, by a turn of the wrist, be easily convertible 
into an exquisite chapter for a future novel. 

But where is the great mischief of any private fancies 
of this kind, which moreover have some foundation ini 
an undoubted versatility and general accomplishments? 
^ven in the matter of external daintiness, a great deal 
too much fuss is made about it, and many ill-natured re- 
marks vented, as if no other eminent man had a private 
hobby. If the private hobbies of the majority of our 
leadmg minds, and well-known men of genius, were dis- 
played, the eyes of the Public would open to the largest 
circle, and its mouth become pantomimic. One great 
author has a fancy for conjuring tricks, which he per- 
forms *' in a small circle," to admiration ; another would 
play at battledore and shuttle-cock, till he dropped; 
another or two (say a dozen) prefer a ballet to any other 
work of art; one likes to be a tavern-king, and to be pla- 
ced in the "chair;" another prefers to sit on a wooden 
bench round the fire of a hedge alehouse, and keep all the 
smock-frocks in a roar; two or three are amateur mes- 
merists, and practice "the passes" with prodigious satis- 
faction ; one poet likes to walk in a high wind and a 
pelting rain, without his hat, and repeating his verses 
aloud ; another smokes during half the day, and perhaps 
half the night, with his feet upon the fender and puffing 
the cloud up the chimney ; another sits rolled up in a 
bear's-skin, and as soon as he has got the " idea," he 
rushes out to waite it down ; another has a fancy for 
playing all sorts of musical instruments, and could not 
be left alone in a room with organ, bag-pipe, or bassoon, 
but in a few minutes a symphony would begin to vibrate 
through the wall ; and if so much is thought of an over- 
attention to a man's bodily outside, what should be said 
of those who — as one would fill a tub — pour or cram into 
the bodily inside so much that is not harmless, but injures 
health, and with it injures the powers of the mind, and 
the moral feelings, besides shortening the duration of 
lif^l We should look into ourselves, and be tolerant. 

Notwithstanding the popularity of Sir E. L. Bulwer, 
we-'hardly think he has been sufficiently appreciated as 
a great novelist by the majority, even of those critics 
who admire his works ; while the hostile attacks and de- 
preciations have been very numerous and unceasing^. 
Of his philosophy we would say in brief that we believe 



312 SIR EDWARD LYTTON BULWER. 

the world is hardly in the main so bad as he considers 
it, and certainly with many more exceptions than he 
seems to admit; and that he himself is a much better 
man than he knows of, and only wants more faith in 
genuine and sincere nature to be himself the possessor 
of as large a share as his faith. 



WILLIAM HARRISON AINSWORTH. 

"Madame Tussaud describes * * * * as a fine handsome-looking man, with 
a florid complexion, and a military air. He had presided over some of the 
massacres in the provinces."— Madame Tussaud's Memoirs. 

" With regard to the personal aescriptions of the different characters in- 
troduced throughout the work, it may be confidently asserted, that they are 
Jikely to be more accurate th.in those generally given by other authors ." — Ibid. 
Preface. 

From the historical novel and romance, as reorigina- 
ted, in modern times, by Madame de Genlis and Sir 
"Walter Scott, and adopted with such high success by- 
Sir E. L. Bulwer, and with such extensive popularity 
hy Mr. James, there has of late years sprung up a sort 
•of lower or less historical romance, in which the chief 
-part of the history consisted in old dates, old names, 
old houses, and old clothes. But dates in themselves 
tire but numerals, names only sounds, houses and 
streets mere things to be copied from prints and rec- 
ords ; and any one may do the same with regard to old 
coats, and hats, wigs, waitscoats, and boots. Now, we 
know that " all flesh is grass," but grass is not flesh, for 
all that , nor is it of any use to show us hay for hu- 
manity. 

To throw the soul back into the vitality of the past, 
to make the imagination dwell with its scenes and walk 
Jhand in hand with knowledge ; to live with its most 
eminent men and women, and enter into their feelings 
and thoughts as well as their abodes, and be sensitive 
with them of the striking events and ruling influences 
of the time ; to do all this, and to give it a vivid form 
in words, so as to bring it before the eye, and project 
it into the sympathies of the modern world, this is to 
write the truest history no less than the finest histori- 
cal fiction ; this is to be a great historical romancist — 
something very diff"erent from a reviver of old clothes. 

Such are the extremes of this class; and if there be 
very few who in execution approach the higher stand- 
ard, so there are, perhaps, none who do not display 
some merits which redeem them from the charge of a 
mere raking and furbishing up of by-gone materials. 
Dd 



314 WILLIAM HARRISON AINS WORTH. 

But as there is a great incursion of these un-historical 
un-romantic romances into the literature of the present 
day, and fresh adventurers marshaUing their powers of 
plunder on the borders, it may be of some service that 
we have drawn a strong line of demarcation, displaying- 
the extreme distinctions, and leaving the application to 
the general judgment. 

With regard to the Newgate narrative of " Jack Shep- 
pard" and the extraordinarily extensive notoriety it ob- 
tained for the writer, upon the residuum of which he 
founded his popularity, so much just severity has al- 
ready been administered from criticism and from the 
opinion of the intellectual portion of the public, and its 
position has been so fully settled, that we are glad to 
pass over it without farther animadversion. 

The present popularity of Mr. Ainsworth could not 
have risen out of its own materials. His so-called his- 
torical romance of " Windsor Castle" is not to be re- 
garded as a work of literature open to serious criticism.. 
It is a picture book, and full of very pretty pictures. 
Also full of catalogues of numberless suits of clothes. 
It would be difficult to open it any where without the 
eye falling on such words as cloth of gold, silver tissue, 
green jerkin, white plumes. 

Looking for an illustration, we are stopped at the 
second page. Here is the introduction of two char- 
acters : — 

" His countenance was full of thought and intelligence ; and he had a 
broad, lofty brow, shaded by a profusion of light brown ringlets ; a long, 
straight, and finely-formed nose ; a full, sensitive, and well-chiselled mouth ; 
and a pointed chin. His eyes were large, dark, and somewhat melancholy 
in expression ; and his complexion possessed that rich, clear, brown tint, con- 
stantly met with in Italy or Spain, though but seldom seen in a native of our 
colder clime. His dress was rich but sombre, consisting of a doublet of black 
satin, worked with threads of Venetian gold ; hose of the same material, and 
similarly embroidered ; a shirt curiously wrought with black silk, and fast- 
ened at the collar with black enamelled clasps ; a cloak of black velvet, pass- 
mented with gold, and lined with crimson satin ; a flat black velvet cap, set 
with pearls and goldsmith's work, and adorned with a short white plume ; 
and black velvet buskins. His arms were rapier and dagger, both having gilt 
and graven handles, and sheaths of black velvet. 

" As he moved along the sound of voices chanting vespers arose from Saint 
George's Chapel ; and while he paused to listen to the solemn strains, a door in 
that part of the castle used as the King's privy lodgings, opened, and a person 
advanced towards him. The new-comer had broad, brown, martial-looking fea- 
tures, darkened still more by a thick coal-black beard, clipped short in the fash- 
ion of the time, and a pair of enormous moustachios. He was accoutred in a 
habergeon, which gleamed from beneath the folds of a russet-coloured man- 
tle, and wore a steel cap in lieu of a bonnet on his head." — Windsor Castle. 
p. 2-3. 

The book is also full of processions, banquets, royal 



WILLIAM HARRISON AINcVVORTH. 315 

hunting parties, courtiers, lords, and jesters, who are in- 
deed *' very dull fools." It has, moreover, a demon ghost 
in the form of Heme the Hunter, who, according to this 
legend, led King Henry VHI. and all his court the life 
of a dog. As to plot or story it does not pretend to any. 

" Old St. Paul's, a tale of the Plague and the Fire," 
is a diluted imitation of some parts of De Foe's " Plague 
in London," varied with libertine adventures of Lord 
Rochester and his associates. It is generally dull, ex- 
cept when it is revolting. There are descriptions of 
nurses who poison or smother their patients, wretched 
prisoners roasted alive in their cells, and one felon who 
thrusts his arms through the red-hot bars — " literally" 
is added, by w^ay of apology. 

A critic recently remarked of Mr. Ainsworth's " St. 
James's, or the Court of Queen Anne," that the deline- 
ations of character in it were mere portraits, and no- 
thing more. " The business in which they are engaged 
has no vitality for any but themselves — it is dull, passe 
in every sense of the word, and they leave not a single 
incident or memento of romance or poetry behind them 
by which to identify them in our hearts ; so that, in 
truth, we turn back from these cut-and-dry dummies to 
Maclise's portrait of Mr. Ainsworth quite as a matter of 
relief; and as we sit contemplating his handsome and 
cheerful lineaments, wonder how, in the name of all 
that is romantic, he will get through the task which he 
has assigned to himself, of rendering the dullest period 
of our history amusing to our ' mass' of readers. It 
is one thing to write an historical romance ; another, 
to write a romantic history ; and a third to write a his- 
tory without any romance." This is all very just, and 
we might quote many similar opinions. 

It has become very plain, that brief as this paper is, 
the natural termination of it can no longer be delayed. 
The truth must be told. This paper is a joint-produc- 
tion. No sooner were the first two paragraphs seen, 
than the article was taken out of the writer's hands in 
jrder to prevent a severity which seemed advancing 
with alarming strides. But the continuation by anoth- 
er hand appearing to be very little better, recourse was 
had to a quotation from the author's works, introduced 
by a third hand; and fijially, as it was feared by the 
hint at " similar opinions" that further critical referen- 
ces were intended, it was unanimously agreed that no. 



316 WILLIAM HAREISON AINSWORTH. 

thing more should be done in that way, except to coin- 
cide with the remark made above, as to the handsome 
and good-tempered portrait of a man who is usually 
spared in public, because so much esteemed and regard- 
ed in private. 



MRS. SHELLEY. 



" Out of the depths of Nature — 

Substance, shades, or dreams. 
Thou shalt call up — sift — and take 
"What seems fitting- best to make 

A structure, fraught with direful gleams, 

Or one all filled with sunny beams." 

Oh you, who sentried stand upon the temple wall ; 
Holy, and nearer to the glory's golden fall. 
Moon-like, possess and shed at large its rays I" 

Cornelius Mathews. 

For though 



Not to be pieiced by the dull eye whose beam 

Is spent on outward shapes, there is a way 

To make a search into its hidden'st passage." — Shirley. 

The imaginative romance as distinguished from the 
'historical romance, and the actual or social life fiction, is 
of very rare occurrence in the literature of the present 
day. Whether the cause lies with the writers or the 
public, or the character of events and influence now op- 
erating on society, certain it is that the imaginative ro- 
mance is almost extinct among us. 

We had outgrown the curdling horrors and breath- 
less apprehensions of Mrs. Ratcliffe, and the roseate 
pomps of Miss Jane Porter. But why have we no 
Frankensteins, for that fine work is in advance of the 
age? 

Perhaps we ought to seek the cause of the scarcity 
in the difficulty of the production. A mere fruitless, 
purposeless excitement of the imagination will not do 
now. The imaginative romance is required to be a sort 
of epic — a power to advance — a something to propel 
the frame of things. Such is Bulwer's " Zanoni," a 
profound and beautiful work of fiction, which has been 
reviewed in its place, and in w^hich Godwin's '' St. Le- 
on" found a worthy successor. With this single ex- 
ception, the first place among the romances of our day 
belongs to the " Frankenstein" of Mrs. Shelley. 

The solitary student with whom the longing desire 
to pry into the secrets of nature ends in the discovery 
of the vital principle itself, and the means of communi- 
cating it, thus describes the consummation of his toils. 
Dd2 



318 MRS. SHELLEY.. 

We quote the passage as illustrative of the genius by 
which the extravagance of the conception is rendered 
subservient to artisiical effect : — 

" It was on a dreary night of November, that I beheld the accomplishment 
of my toils- With an anxiety that almost amounted to agony, I collected the 
instruments of life around me, that I might infuse a spark of being into the 
lifeless thing that lay at my feet. It was already one in the morning; the 
rain pattered dismally against the panes, and my candle was nearly burnt out, 
■when, by the glimmer of the half-extinguished light, I saw the dull yellow 
eye of the creature open ; it Ijreathed hard, and a convulsive motion agitated 
its limbs. 

'• How can I describe my emotions at this catastrophe, or how delineate the 
wretch whom with such infinite pains and care I had endeavoured to form ? 
His limbs were in proportion, and I had selected his features as beautiful. 
JBeautiful I — Great God I His yellow skin scarcely covered the work of mus- 
cles and arteries beneath ; his hair was of a lustrous black, and flowing ; his 
teeth of a pearly whiteness ; but these luxuriances only formed a more horrid 
contrast with his watery eyes, that seemed almost of the same colour as the 
dun white sockets in which they were set, his shrivelled complexion, and 
straight black lips." — Frankenstein, vol. i., p. 97, 98. 

The Monster in " Frankenstein," sublime in his ugli- 
ness, his simplicity, his passions, his wrongs and his 
strength, physical and mental, embodies in the wild nar- 
rative more than one distinct and important moral the- 
ory or proposition. In himself he is the type of a class 
deeply and cruelly aggrieved by nature — the Deformed^ 
or hideous in figure or countenance, whose S5'mpathies 
and passions are as strong as their bodily deformity 
renders them repulsive. An amount of human woe, 
great beyond reckoning, have such experienced. When 
the Monster pleads his cause against cruel man, and 
when he finally disappears on his raft on the icy sea to> 
build his own funeral pile, he pleads the cause of all 
that class who have so strong a claim on the help and 
sympathy of the world, yet find little else but disgust, 
or, at best, neglect. 

The Monster created by Frankenstein is also an illus- 
tration of the embodied consequences of our actions. 
As he, when formed and endowed with life, became to 
his imaginary creator an everlasting ever-present curse, 
so may one single action, nay a word, or it may be a 
thought, thrown upon the tide of time become to its 
originator a curse, never to be recovered, never to be 
shaken off. 

" Frankenstein" suggests yet another analogy. It 
teaches the tragic results of attainment when an im- 
petuous irresistible passion hurries on the soul to its 
doom. Such tragic results are the sacrificial fires out 
of which humanity rises purified. They constitute one 



MRS. SHELLEY. 319'> 

form of the great ministry of Pain. The conception of 
" Frankenstein" is the converse of that of the delight- 
ful German fiction of Peter Schlemil, in which the loss 
of his shadow (reputation or honour) leads on the hero 
through several griefs and troubles to the great simpli- 
city of nature and truth ; while in " Frankenstein" the 
aitamment of a gigantic reality leads through crime and 
desolation to the same goal, but it is only reached in 
the moment of death. 

In " Pantika, or Traditions of the most Ancient 
Times," by William Howitt, there is much imaginative 
power, and great invention. These tales abound in 
lofty thoughts, and the descriptions are both beautiful 
and grand. The "Exile of Heaven" is, perhaps, the 
finest of the series both in design and execution. There 
is sublimity in the rapid view of creation as witnessed 
by the Angel, and in the picture of Cain, and in that of 
Satan. There is also gorgeous and glowing painting in 
the description of the voluptuous city of Lilith the 
Queen of Beauty, whom the Angel in his presumption^ 
had created to be more perfect than Eve, and through 
whom he had lost Heaven and brought evil on earth. 
The contrast between this imaginative creation and that 
of Frankenstein is curious. The punishment here 
comes through beauty, instead of deformity. Lilith is 
made too beautiful ; it is impossible to sympathise with 
the Angel's hatred of her, or to believe she was evil. 
This is the fault of the story. The attempt to make 
her exquisitely beautiful, yet not an object of any sym- 
pathy, is unsuccessful. The fact is, " friend Howitt" 
has got into a very ticklish position. We venture to 
submit that the loveliness of his misleading fair one 
ought to have been made to fade gradually before the 
view, as the merely external always does in its influ- 
ence upon the senses. This would, at least, have 
shown an individual triumph over her ; but as the story 
stands she is triumphant (as at present the sensual beau- 
ty is in the world), with every prospect of continuing 
so, according to the sequel of this gorgeous fable. 

There is a high purpose in the Angel's final humihty, 
his submission to the existence of evil, and to the im- 
possibility of obliterating the consequences of action,. 
The teachings which lead to this are finely managed ; 
— as when, in his wanderings through space, he sees a- 
dim planet covered with water, suddenly become con- 



320 MRS. SHELLEY. 

vulsed and tossed in hideous commotion, and while he 
murmurs at the ruin he expects to witness, beholds a 
fair world emerge from these fiery and terrific throes ; 
the mountains have risen, the waters are confined to 
their appointed bed, the dry land is ready to become 
-clothed with verdure, and a great and beneficent work 
has been done. 

Most of the other tales are built too much on the 
fierce and exclusive spirit of the ancient Jewish people. 
They consequently breathe a vindictive, blood-thirsty 
tone. The horrible punishment of the Starving Man 
who kills and eats the Scape-goat, and then finds him- 
self possessed by all the crimes of mankind ; the wretch- 
ed case of the poor Soothsayer cursed by the Hebrew 
Prophet, and detained in bed for a whole year by a 
congregation of all the Idols in his room (standing round 
his bed), who will not suff'er him to move, and keep in 
his life by feeding him on oil-cake, till he almost turns 
into a mummy, and at last sees the Idols begin to crum- 
ble round him, and reptiles crawling about among the 
ruins ; these are fine and striking inventions, worthy of 
an eastern imagination, and only assume a repulsive 
appearance because the Infinite Power of the universe 
is represented as causing them. If Allah or Buddha 
had done this, we should have felt nothing of the kind. 

Had the author of the " Manuscripts of Erdely" pos- 
sessed clearness of conception and arrangement of his 
subject in the same degree as he is gifted with imagi- 
nation, invention, and fine pov/er of developing charac- 
ter and describing both action and scenery, his work 
would have been entitled to one of the highest places in 
romance. But Mr. Stephens has destroyed the effect 
of his work by the prodigality of his incidents and per- 
sonages, and by the confusion of his method of dealing 
with them. There is ma'tter for four different plots, 
with a hero and heroine to each, in his one romance. 
He gives evidence of a learned research and historical 
knowledge ; we find also a puzzlmg array of names, not 
unlike that which is to be found in Robert Browning's 
" Sordello.'' There are, besides, too many quotations, 
and the fault is the less pardonable in a wa-iter of such 
great original power. 

We have said that there is a fine power of description 
in this author. In attempting an illustration, we are 
puzzled where to choose, so many present themselves. 



MRS. SHELLEY. 321 

The following beautiful and poetical passage must suf- 
fice. A man pure in character but maligned on earth 
has appealed to the spirit of his dead wife for sympa- 
thy :— 

" Spirit of the departed ! do you know that I am innocent ? 

" He raised his eyes, and a curdling thrill crept through his veins '. for, lo ! 
tlie prayer, that, almost silently, had welled up from the sanctuary of his soul, 
had reached its aim, and had an answer. The far depths of the room became 
gradually brightened with a glor}', not of this world ; and a dim, thin, human 
shape, slowly developed its indistinct and shadowy outline, by insensibly di- 
vesting itself, as it were, of one immortal shroud after another, till it stood, 
pale and confessed, in ethereal repose." — Manuscripts of Erdely, vol. i., p. 
307. 

Mrs. Shelley has published, besides " Frankenstein," 
a romance entitled " Valperga," which is less known 
than the former, but is of high merit. She exhibits ia 
her hero, a brave and successful warrior, arriving at the 
height of his ambition, endowed with uncommon beauty 
and strength, and with many good qualities, yet causes, 
him to excite emotions of reprobation and pity, because 
he is cruel and a tyrant, and because in the truth of 
things he is unhappy. This is doing a good work, ta- 
king the false glory from the eyes and showing things 
as they are. There are two female characters of won- 
derful power and beauty. The heroine is a lovely and. 
noble creation. The work taken as a whole, if below 
" Frankenstein" in genius, is yet worthy of its author 
and of her high rank in the aristocracy of genius, as the 
daughter of Godwin and Mary Wolstonecraft, and the 
widow of Shelley. 



ROBERT MONTGOMERY. 

" Parnassus is transformed to Zion Hill, 
And Jewry-palms her steep ascents do fill. 
Now good St. Peter weeps pure Helicon, 
And both the Maries make a music-moan ; — 
Yea, and the prophet of the heavenly IjTe, 
Great Solomon, sings in the English quire, 
And is become a new-found Sonnetist I" 

Bishop Hall. Satire 8. 

Mr. P. — " My friend I — (patting his shoulder) — this is not a bell. (Patting 
the tin bell.) It is a very fine Organ I" — Drama of Punch. 

Humour may be divided into three classes ; the broad, 
the quiet, and the covert. Broad humour is extravagant, 
voluble, obtrusive, full of rich farce and loud laughter : — 
quiet humour is retiring, suggestive, exciting to the ima- 
gination, few of words, and its pictures grave in tone : — 
covert humour, (which also comprises quiet humour,) 
is allegorical, typical, and of cloven tongue — its double 
sense frequently delighting to present the reverse side 
of its real meaning, to smile when most serious, to look 
grave when most facetiously disposed. Of this latter 
class are the comic poems of the ingenious Robert Mont- 
gomery, a humourist whose fine original vein has never 
been rightly appreciated by his contemporaries. He has 
been scoffed at by the profane for writing unmeaning 
nonsense, when that very nonsense had the most disin- 
terested and excellent moral aim ; he has passed for a 
quack, when he nobly made his muse a martyr ; he has 
been laughed at, when he should have been admired ; he 
has been gravely admired when his secret laughter 
should have found response in every inside. He has 
been extensively purchased ; but he has not been under- 
stood. 

In these stirring times when theologies are looking 
up, and the ribald tongues of fifty thousand sectarian 
pulpits wag wrathfully around the head of the Estab- 
lished Maternity ; while she herself is suffering intes- 
tine pains from dangerous wars, and the pure spirit of 
Religion is wandering and waiting in the distant fields ; 
it behoves all those thrifty shepherds who are still dis- 
posed to multiply the goods of this world, and take up 



ROBERT MONTGOMERY. 323' 

the burdens and vain pomps which others being less 
strong, may, peradvemure, find too onerous, — it behoves 
such shepherds, we repeat, to look keenly through and 
beneath all these struggles and backslidings, and to 
watch over the movements of wealthy congregations. 

It is not to be denied that with the vigorous elements 
which distinguish the spirit of the present age, are 
mingled many weaknesses and short-comings ; that 
winding about its truthfulness there are many falsehoods 
and hypocrisies ; that the battle for the right is but too 
frequently mixed up and confused with the battle for the 
wrong; and that amidst so much that is high-minded 
and sincere, there is perhaps still more that is selfish 
and cunning, that is, in fact, not genuine but humbugeous. 

" The London Charivari," to which allusion has pre- 
viously been made on page 163, comprises the three 
classes of humour described at the opening of this paper, 
and may also be said to have a wit and humour pecu- 
liar to itself. The application of these faculties, being 
always liable to exert a powerful influence for good or 
evil, has been from the very first commencement of that 
periodical, devoted to the cause of justice, of good feel- 
ing, and of truth. The most " striking" characteristic 
of this " Punch" is his hatred and ridicule of all grave- 
faced pretences and charlatanry. Considering his very 
unscrupulous nature, it is remarkable how little there is 
of actual private personality in him. If he strikes at 
a man domestically, which is very rare, it is by no 
means on account of his quiet " hearth-stone," but of his 
public humbugeosity. Never before were so many- 
witty, humorous, and choice-spirited individuals ami- 
cably associated together for anything like so long a 
period ; and never before did so many perfectly free- 
spoken wits and humourists indulge their fancies and 
make their attacks with so good-natured a spirit, and 
without one spark of wanton mischief and malignity. 
It is a marked sign of good in the present age. 

In this same light, and to these same moral aims, — 
though with a characteristic diff'erence such as marks 
all original genius — do we regard the public character 
and works of the much-admired yet equally maligned 
Robert Montgomery. At some future time, and when 
his high purpose can no longer be injured by a discovery 
of its inner wheels and movements, springs and fine es- 
capements — at such a period he may perhaps vouchsafe 



"324 ROBERT MONTGOMERY. 

a key to all his great works ; meantime, however, in his 
defence, because we are unable to bear any longer the 
spectacle of so total a misconception of a man's virtues 
and talents in the public mind, we will offer a few elu- 
cidatory comments upon two of his larger productions. 

The poem of" Satan" is evidently the work of a great 
free-thinker. Far be it from us to use this much-abused 
and perverted expression in any but its true sense, with 
regard to Mr. Robert Montgomery. Freely he thinks 
of all spiritual and mundane things ; in fact, his freedom 
amounts to a singular degree of familiarity with those 
Essences and Subjects concerning which nearly every- 
body else entertains too much awe, and doubt of them- 
selves, to venture upon anything like proximity or cir- 
cumambience. But though the thinking faculty of Mr. 
Robert Montgomery makes thus free, it is only within 
the bounds of the " Establishment," as defined in his 
Preface, though not necessarily governed in all other 
respects, — to use his own inimitable words, — by " the 
sternness of adamantine orthodoxy."* In support of 
the spiritual part of his treatment of his subject, and re- 
ferring to the free-thinking of his hero (who is not only 
the Prince of Air, but the London Perambulator, as 
proved by this poem), Mr. Montgomery quotes the fol- 
lowing from high authority : — " Thus the Devil has un- 
■doubtedly a great degree of speculative knowledge in 
divinity ; having been as it were, educated in the best 
divinity school in the universe," &c. He also quotes 
from the same author (Jonathan Edwards) that " it is 
evident he (the Devil) has a great speculative knowledge 
of the nature of experimental religion." These prelim- 
inary statements of the more enlarged view we should 
take of the Satanic mind, and its many unsuspected ac- 
quirements, together with much more which we cannot 
venture to quote, will be found in the Preface to the 
fourth edition of this accomplished Prince. 

Having stated the spiritual or "experimental" drift; 
we have only now to point to the worldly activity or 
practical application, and we shall at once find a key to 
this sublimely humorous design, and its high moral pur- 
pose. This application we shall find in the covert parody 
of the " Devil's Walk" (the one which has been ascribed 
jointly to Porson and to Southey), which for the force 

* Preface to the Fifth Edition of" Satan," p. 2. 



ROBERT MONTGOMERY. 325 

and piquancy of its satire has rarely been surpassed. 
Accordingly, Mr. Robert Montgomery considers the hero 
of his poem, as a real, personal, and highly intellectual 
agent, walking about London — he distinctly alludes to 
London — so that, to follow out this poet's excursion, we 
might meet Satan on 'Change, hear his voice on Water- 
loo Bridge, see him taking a jelly in the saloon of Drury 
Lane theatre, or seated demurely in a pew at Church, 
with a psalter stuck on his ofF-horn. Mr. Montgomery 
intimates and suggests all these sort of things, — nay, 
he directly describes many of the circumstances. For 
instance, Satan goes to the play. To what part of the 
house is not said. His natural locality would of course 
be the pit, and, for this very reason, he would probably 
prefer the one shilling gallery ; but as Mr. Montgomery 
clearly explains that his hero went there on business — 
to collect materials for this very poem, which is written 
as a diabolico-theological and philosophical soliloquy — 
it is to be presumed that he was in the boxes. He thus 
describes a few of his observations, and personal sen- 
sations. 

" Music and Pomp their mingling spirit shed 
Around me ; beauties in their cloud-like robes 
Shine forth, — a scenic paradise, it glares 
Intoxication through the reeling sense 
Of flush'd enjoyment." 

Satan, Book V. 

The comparison of a theatrical scene with a scene 

" Upon the forehead of these fearless times" 

in paradise, and made by one who had actually been in 
both places, would be more bold than reverent, in any 
other writer ; nor are we by any means sure that Satan or 
his poet could show the slightest foundation for it. But 
we bow to their joint authority. He next describes the 
different classes of the audience. Some wish to mount 
upon Shakspeare's wings, and "win a flash" of his 
thought ; but the second, he says, are " a sensual tribe ;" 

" Convened to hear romantic harlots sing, 
On forms to banquet a lascivious gaze, 
While the bright perfidy of wanton eyes 
Through brain and spirit darts delicious fire !" 

Ibid. 

Well may this stern " spirit" feel it delicious, after 
the very different kind of flame to which he has been 
elsewhere accustomed. This is to write philosophy 
and history, moral satire and autobiography, all under 
one highly humorous head. 

Ee 



326 ROCERT MONTGOMERY. 

The main object of the poem of " Satan," however 
ingeniously it may be covered up, is to work out the 
deep satire of the old proverb of the " Devil quoting 
Scripture ;" in fact, he very ably defends in his Pref- 
aces, the propriety of displaying Satan as a great 
preaching LL.D. in private, or a D.D. hypocrite in pub- 
lic. Let any one read his Prefaces — they must see his 
fine aim. Hence, we shall discover in this sublime 
poem a succession of well-glossed blows and thrusts at 
all those clerical brethren who are not guided and gov- 
erned in their duties and efforts by " the sternness of 
adamantine orthodoxy." It will, to any close observer^ 
be perceived that the work throughout, shows no quar- 
ter to Dissent or Tergiversation ; nor to any of the 
proud visions of Newfangledness, which have of late 
exalted their dark antlers above the horns of the aver- 
age humility. 

" Upon the forehead of these fearless times 
I know the haughtiness that now exults : 
But let the modern in his pride, beware I" 

Satan, b. iv. 

Equally, in melodious cornopsean strains does he 
breathe forth a wail over cornucopian pluralities. Here 
are his own soft yet reproachful, sweet yet terrible 
words — no German flute was ever more tenderly 
searching, nor, when based on an ophecleide accom- 
paniment, more confounding. 

" Partaken mercies are forgotten things. 
But Expectation hath a grateful heart 
Hailing the smile of promise from afar; 
Enjoyment dies into ingratitude," &c. 

Ibid. 

And presently afterwards in speaking of " haughty- 
featured England," he compares certain proud authori- 
ties, to — 

" A hell-bom feeling such as I would nurse. 

Of Mammon, that vile despot of the soul. 
The happy meekness of contented minds 
Is fretted with ambition,"' &c. 

Ibid, b. iv. 

Ahem ! Really this is a very sad state of things. 
Amidst all this fine comic writing who can fail to see 
the sadness of the subtle truth that lurks beneath the 
assumed gravity. The hero of the poem playing the 
nurse to a juvenile compatriot (in the first line of the 
preceding quotation) is an equally dark and " palpable" 
hit at the very dangerous teachings of various branches 



KOBERT MONTGOMERY. 327 

of Dissent, and sections of the Church itself ; while the 
*' happy meekness" of those " contented minds" which 
are '' fretted with ambition" quietly and quaintly slips 
in a reflection that must have caused the sounding- 
board of many a pulpit to tremble with the vibratory 
effluence of the Conscience beneath. Moreover, as 
Satan warms with his theme, he becomes yet more di- 
rect in his attack, though we are not quite sure at what 
denomination of the unorthodox he levels his fork — 

" Some gracious, g^-and, and most accomplished few, 
Each with a little kinsjdom in his brain, 
Who club tog-ether to re-cast the world, 
A.nd love so many that they care for none," &c. 

Ibid, b. VI. 

Such is the main-spring of the covered movement 
*' capped and jewelled," which is discoverable in the great 
poem of '' Satan." That there are many branch-move- 
ments and inferior wheels playing upon the complex 
circle of general lay society, is equally apparent, even 
as was done in its prototype (the " Devil's Walk,") but 
we cannot give space to their examination. A few in- 
sulated passages, illustrative of poetical excellencies, of 
the opinion secretly entertained by the poet of himself, 
and of the character of the accomplished Prince, are all 
that can be attempted. Of the latter he finely says — 

" His nature was a whirlpool of desires, 
And mighty passions perilously mixed, 
That with the darkness of the demon world 
Had something of the light of Heaven." 

Ibid, b. ii. 

With what graceful ingenuity does the poet seem to 
say so much in the first line just quoted, and yet say 
nothing ; because it is clear that desires, in a whirlpool 
of themselves, could not exist as any one definite de- 
sire. The line, therefore, is a terrific nothing. What 
follows, no doubt furnished Milton with the idea of his 
Satan, whose form had not yet lost all its " original 
brightness ; nor appeared less than archangel ruined." 
It is hence very evident that Milton, by the inspiration 
of his genius, foresaw what Robert Montgomery would 
say, and wisely availed himself of the poetic revelation. 
Montgomery's " Satan" is, nevertheless, disposed to be 
complimentary to Milton, who, he says, is 

" Flaming with visions of eternal glare !" 

Ibid, b. V. 

The compliment has rather a professional look; but 
it should be remembered from whose mouth this pro- 



328 ROBERT MONTGOMERY. 

ceeds. The same great master of light and shade also 
favours us with the following portrait : — 

•' Then mark the hypocrite of pious mould, 
For ever putting on unearthly moods, 
And looking lectures witli his awful eyes, &c. 

* * * 

Or sternly paints some portraiture of sin, 
But feels himself the model vyhence he drew." 

Ibid, b. iii.- 

We are upon dangerous ground, we know ; but it is 
ever thus in dealing with great humourists. One never 
scarcely knows where to have them. He proceeds in 
this strain : — 

" Meanwhile, I flatter the surpassing fool, 

* X * 

Too mean for virtue, too polite for vice." 

Ibid, b. iii. 

This Prince is becoming personal, and we must there- 
fore conclude with one more flash of his pen at those 
who, impelled " by frenzied glory," will venture on " till 
dashed to ruin ;" and he then makes an apostrophe to 
the " Review of Departed Days" of poetry — 

" By whom, as beacon-light for time unborn. 
The past might well have risen — hast forgot 
The law of retribution in thy love 
Of fame, and adoration to the dead. — 
A war awakes I — what poetry is here," &c. 

Ibid, b. iv. 

All that remains, therefore, with reference to the 
Princely Preacher's prolonged soliloquy, is to give one 
specimen of the "poetry," as abstract art, of his- we 
had almost said — Serene Highness, so very amiable 
does he appear in these pages : — 

" So may it ever be ! let ages gone — 

Whence monuments, by sad experience piled, 
Might o'er unheedful days a warning frown — 
Like buried lumber, in oblivion sleep ; 
Experience is the sternest foe of hell." 

Ibid. 

How novel a face does even the commonest proverb 
wear, when rouged and rabbit-pawed by genius ! The 
last line admirably conveys the intimation of what "a 
burnt child" both dreads and hates ; or, perhaps, it 
would rather infer that those who are burnt most be- 
come the most implacably hot. Our last quotation 
must be in illustration of the fine " keeping" which ex- 
ists in this poem as a work of art. Other poems seek 
to rise to a climax, now and then, and usually towards 
the close ; but this very properly descends, and thor- 



ROBERT MONTGOMERY. 329 

oughly illustrates " the art of sinking in poetry" de- 
scribed by Dean Swift. Let us observe how, step by 
step, from primitive elements to chaos, thence to the 
Satanic solitude, thence to a chorus of thunder-clouds, 
thence to an earthly commotion, thence (like the last 
revival of a dying candle) to nature's reel of anguish, 
and thence — to a small geographic familiarity. 

" I love this passion of the Elements, 
This mimicry of chaos, in their might 
Of storm ! — And here, in my lone awfulness, 
While eveiy cloud a thunder-hymn repeats, 
Earth throbs, and nature in convulsion reels, 
Farewell to England 1'' 

Ibid, b. vi . 

This is a truly unique specimen of the bathetic, and 
does his Unserene Profundity the most abysmal degree 
of credit. 

Impressed with the deepest admiration of his sublim- 
ity and covert humour, we pass onwards, bowing, 
through his other works, and beneath their walls and 
towers of many editions, until we bow ourselves into 
the presence of Mr. Robert Montgomery's " Woman." 
As a poem, the subject is both human and divine ; but 
it has moreover a secret and occult purpose of the most 
magnanimous kind. 

Ostensibly this poem entitled " Woman" is a versified 
flattery, extending through upwards of three thousand 
three hundred lines, and it also abounds with sentiments 
of gallantry and of chivalry, which in these dull days 
of matter-of-fact courtship is really quite refreshing to 
meet with. One specimen will suffice : — 

" Next Chivalry, heroic child, 
With brow erect, and features mild. 
Placed Love npon his matchless throne, 
For gallantry to guard alime. 
Then, woman I m that reign of heart, 
How peerless was thy magic part ! 
* * " * 

And shall we, in a venal age. 

When love hath grown more coldly sage, 

With frigid laugh and frown decry , 

The bright return of Chivalry ? — 

The trumpet-music of the past. 

In tales of glory doom'd to last, — 

No longer must one echo stir 

The pulse of English character ? 

Woman, canto ii. 

But while the exoteric adulations of the fair, and sem- 
llances of a yearning to restore the romance of ancient 
.days of chivalry, with his suggestions for a new order 
Ee2 



330 ROBERT MONTGOMERY. 

of Church Militant, might lead one to confer upon his 
gallant reverence the title of the Spiritual Quixote, there 
lurks beneath all this an esoteric design yet more mag- 
nanimous, and of still greater purity of self-devotion. 
Compared with this " the tales of glory doom'd to last" 
(let us observe his covert contempt of such glory in the 
expression of doom'd) will be regarded as the mere toys 
and gilded brutalities of a rude age : nor shall we pay 
further attention to those bright external attractions of 
the fair, which, as this poet says, b)'" their " ray of un- 
discern'd control," — 

" Advanced above life's daily sphere, 
Disclosed her radiance, full and near ; 
And kindled for bet.louded man 
The light that only woman can." 

Woman, c. ii. 

The very bad grammar by which the last couplet is 
beclouded, (and which indeed is so marked a feature in 
this, and other poems of the same inspired penman) will 
do much to prove that Mr. Robert Montgomery always 
has ulterior designs far above and beyond all the mate- 
riality of mere philological expression, and that his 
muse is not amenable to any of its known law^s and re- 
quisitions. 

The secret purpose, then, which is concealed with so 
much subtle humour, like a bright serpent, beneath all 
the superincumbent rubbish-couplets of this wonderful 
work of " Woman" is nothing less than an attempt to 
bring about a thorough reformation in Art, by means of 
a thorough purification of the public taste in poetry.. 
This reformation and this purification he seeks to ac- 
complish by the converse of the usually received no- 
tions as to the required process. Observing that to give 
the public the most pure and refined poetical produc- 
tions does not answer the desired e\\(l^ because they 
are not read, or, when read, only appreciated by the 
few, the high-soaring, disinterested, and original mind 
of Robert Montgomery has alighted upon the idea of 
opening the eyes of the public by a master-stroke of 
genius; viz.^ by giving it a production which it would 
read, and of a kind which should display the strongest 
possible contrast to all genuine poetry, so that the pub- 
lic should suddenly exclaim, " What is this darkness % 
— and where is the light ^ — what intensely atrocious 
trash do we read ? — and v/here is the most unlike thing. 
to this ; for our souls are confounded and athirst 1" 



ROBERT MONTGOMERY. 331 

Accordingly, with a magnanimity only to be classified 
with that of the devout martyrs, and of the Roman he- 
roes who devoted themselves for the good of their 
country, this great Virtue has devoted itself — not to an 
honourable fate, but, more than that, to the utmost dis- 
grace for the good of his literature ! Knowing well 
what he was about, and fully prepared for all the odium 
and contempt that such a proceeding must reasonably 
be expected to entail, he launched upon the public, in 
this long poem of " Woman" a cargo of such unques- 
tionable nonsense, such common-place vapidities of ad- 
ulation, such high pretensions of imbecility, such un- 
grammatical flourishes and touches of the bathetic, and 
such a prolonged droning sing-song, uninspired even by 
the abortive life of one vigorous absurdity, — a produc- 
tion, in fine, which must be pronounced, in its parts, 
and as a whole, to be without parallel throughout the 
entire range of modern literature. 

But the result has been quite as wonderful as the 
poem, Mr. Montgomery must console his bosom by 
the proud consciousness of having meant to act a noble 
part. With much regret we have to record the total 
failure of his esoteric scheme. We have described 
what he intended, and we have honestly, and pretty 
fully, expressed our opinion of how he carried out his 
design in the poem of " Woman." But it was misun- 
derstood. For the public (or at least an immense num- 
ber of readers) not perceiving his drift, and not feeling 
the force of contrast, as the strategical martyr had in- 
tended, actually received the thing in sober earnest — 
as a poem ! Its elaborate stupidity and matchless non- 
sense were all thrown away ! The effort to exhaust 
with a mixture of folly and emptiness was defeated. 
The labour to disgust had been in vain — and Robert 
Montgomery, with " Woman" under his arm, was admit- 
ted into the public temple of the Muses, and again 
crowned as ^ a Poet !' 

But not alone did the greatly humorous, though de- 
feated Strategist enter this public Temple. Behind him 
came a crowd shouting his praises, and around him was 
a crowd, shouting in praise of his poetry ; and in front 
of him was a crowd who bore placards, showing that 
his poems had gone through more than four or five 
editions for every one edition of the works of such fel- 
lows as Wordsworth, or Coleridge, or Tennyson. But 



332 ROBERT MONTGOMERY. 

among this latter crowd there also appeared Mr. Punch! 
This well-known personage had a very large mirror 
under his short cloak. Courteously pointing his toe, 
as he approached the sacred Penman, he eloquently ex- 
pressed his admiration of the man, who, after waving 
his white cambric handkerchief from a pulpit till the 
tears ran in rivulets all round, should yet have discov- 
ered another equally successful trick of oratory under 
circumstances where it was impossible to display the 
ring upon his little finger. Mr. Punch then coughed 
slightly — gave his mirror a rounding polish with the 
corner of his cloak, and addressing the crowds as the 
Public, he turned the mirror towards them, and polite- 
ly requested to be informed what pecuhar impression 
upon their thoughts they derived from the mtelligent 
object they contemplated therein ? 



THOMAS CARLYLE. 

" Always there stood before him, night and day, 
Of wayward vary-colored circumstance 
The imperisliable presences serene, 
Colossal, without form, or sense, or sound ; 
Dim shadows but unwaning presences 
Four-faced to four corners of the sky : 
And yet again, three shadows, fronting one, 
One forward, one respectant, three but one ; 
And yet again, again and evermore. 
For the two first were not, but only seemed, 
One shadow in the midst of a great light, 
One reflex from eternity on time. 
One mighty countenance of perfect calm, 
Awful with most invariable eyes." 

Tennyson. The Mystic. 

"Beware when the great God lets loose a thinker on this planet. Then 
all things are at risk. There is not a piece of science, but its flank may be 
turned to-morrow, there is not any literary reputation, nor the so-called 
eternal names of fame, that may not be revised and condenmed. ***** 
He claps wings to the sides of all the solid old lumber of the world." 

Emerson. Essay on circles. 

According to the view of the microcosmus, what is 
said of the world itself, may be said of every individu- 
al in it ; and what is said of the individual, may be pre- 
dicated of the world. Now the individual mind has 
been compared to a prisoner in a dark room, or in a 
room which would be dark but for the windows of the 
same, meaning the senses, in a figure ; nothing being in 
the mind without the mediation of the senses, as Locke 
held, — " except," as Leibnitz acutely added in modifica- 
tion, " the mind itself," Thus is it with the individual, 
and thus with the general humanity. Were it not for 
the Something from without, and the Something with- 
in, which are both Revelations, we should sit on the 
floor of our dark dungeon, between its close stifling 
walls, gnawing vainly with the teeth of the mind, at the 
chains we wear. But conclusions which genius has 
leapt successfully, and science proved, have come to 
aid us. It is well to talk of the progress of the public 
mind. The public mind, — that is, the average intelli- 
gence of the many, — never does make progress, ex- 
cept by imbibing great principles from great men, 
which, after long and frequent reiteration, become part 
of the moral sense of a people. The educators are the 



334 THOMAS CARLYLE. 

tru.e and only movers. Progress implies the most ac- 
tive of energies, such as genius is, such as science is; 
and general progress implies, and indeed essentinlly 
consists of, individual progresses, men of genius, and 
other good teachers, working. A Ulysses must pass 
with the first goat, — call him Nobody, or by his right 
name. And to return to our first figure, — what the 
senses are to the individual mind, men of genius are to 
the general mind. Scantily assigned by Providence 
for necessary ends, one original thinker strikes a win- 
dow out here, and another there ; wielding the mallet 
sharply, and leaving it to others to fashion grooves 
and frames, and complete advantage into convenience. 
That Mr. Carlyle is one of the men of genius thus 
referred to, and that he has knocked out his window 
from the blmd wall of his century, we may add without 
any fear of contradiction. We may say, too, that it is 
a window to the east ; and that some men complain of 
a certain bleakness in the wind which enters at it, 
when they should rather congratulate themselves and 
him on the aspect of the new sun beheld through it, the 
orient hope of which he has so discovered to their 
eyes. And let us take occasion to observe here, and 
to bear in memory through every subsequent remark 
we maybe called upon to make, that it has not been his 
object to discover to us any specific prospect -not the 
mountain to the right, nor the oak-wood to the left, nor 
the river which runs down between, — but the sun, which 
renders all these visible. 

When *' the most thinking people" had, at the sound of 
all sorts of steam-engines, sufficiently worshipped that 
idol of utilitarianism which Jeremy Bentham, the king, 
had set up, and which Thomas Carlyle, the transcend- 
entalist, and many others, who never read a page of 
Bentham's works, have resolved to narrow to their own 
misconceptions of this philosopher, — the voice of a 
prophet was heard praying three times a day, with 
magnanimous reiteration, towards Jerusalem, — towards 
old Jerusalem, be it observed ; and also towards the 
place of sun-rising for ultimate generations. And the 
voice spoke a strange language, — nearly as strange as 
Benthara^'s own, and as susceptible of translation into 
English. Not English by any means, the critics said it 
spoke; nor even German, nor Greek; although partak- 
ing considerably more of the two last than of English; 



THOMAS CARLYLE. 335 

but more of Saxon than either, we humbly beg to add. 
Yet if the grammarians and public teachers coiild not 
measure it out to pass as classic English, after the 
measure of Swift or Addison, or even of Bacon and 
Milton,— if new words sprang gauntly in it from sav- 
age derivatives, and rushed together in outlandish com- 
binations,— if the collocation was distortion, wandering 
wildly up and down, — if the comments were every- 
where in a heap, like the " pots and pans" of Bassano, 
classic or not, English or not ; it was certainly a true 
language — a language " fj-epoTtuv avOpuTzuv ;" the significant 
articulation of a living soul : God's breath was in the 
vowels of it. And the clashing of these harsh com- 
pounds at last drew the bees into assembly, each mur- 
muring his honey-dream. And the hearers who stood 
longest to listen, became sensible of a still grave music 
issuing like smoke from the clefts of the rock. If it 
was not " style" and " classicism," it was something 
belter; it was soul-language. There was a divinity at 
the shaping of these rough-hewn periods. 

We dwell the longer upon the construction of Mr. 
Carlyle's sentences, because of him it is pre-eminently 
true, that the speech is the man. All powerful writers 
will leave, more or less, the pressure of their individu- 
ality on the medium of their communication with the 
public. Even the idiomatic writers, who trust their 
thoughts to a customary or conventional phraseology, 
and thus attain to a recognized level perfection in the 
medium, at the expense of being less instantly incisive 
and expressive (according to an obvious social analogy) 
have each an individual aspect. But the individuality 
of this writer is strongly pronounced. It is graven — 
like the Queen's arrow on the poker and tongs of her 
national prisons — upon the meanest word of his utter- 
ance. He uses no moulds in his modeUing, as you may 
see by the impression of his thumb-nail upon the clay. 
He throws his truth with so much vehemence, that the 
print of the palm of his hand is left on it. Let no man 
scoff at the language of Carlyle — for if it forms part of 
his idiosyncracy, his idiosyncracy forms part of his 
truth; — and let no man say that we recommend Car- 
lylisms — for it is obvious, from our very argument, that, 
in the mouth of an imitator, they would unlearn their 
uses, and be conventional as Addison, or a mere chaos 
of capitals, and compounds, and broken language 



336 THOMAS CARLYLE. 

We have named Carlyle in connection with Bentham, 
and we believe that you will find in " your philosophy," 
no better antithesis for one, than is the other. There 
is as much resemblance between them as is necessary 
for antithetic unlikeness. Each headed a great move- 
ment among thinking men; and each made a language 
for himself to speak with ; and neither of them origi- 
nated what they taught. Bentham's work was done by 
systematizing ; Carlyle's, by reviving and reiterating. 
And as from the beginning of the world, the two great 
principles of matter and spirit have combated, — whether 
in man's personality, between the flesh and the soul ; 
or in his speculativeness, between the practical and the 
ideal ; or in his mental expression, between science and 
poetry, — Bentham and Carlyle assumed to lead the 
double van on opposite sides. Bentham gave an im- 
pulse to the material energies of his age, of the stuff of 
which he was himself made, — while Carlyle threw him- 
self before the crushing chariots, not in sacrifice, but 
deprecation ; " Go aside — there is a spirit even in the 
wheels .'" In brief, and to take up that classification of 
virtues made by Proclus and the later Platonists, — Ben- 
tham headed such as were TToliTLnai, Carlyle exalts that 
which is reTiEGTiKT/, venerant and religious virtue. 

Every reader may not be acquainted, as every thinker 
should, with the Essays of R. W. Emerson, of Concord, 
Massachusetts. He is a follower of Mr. Carlyle, and in 
the true spirit; that is, no imitator, but a worker out of 
his own thoughts. To one of the English editions of 
this volume, Mr. Carlyle has written a short Preface, 
in which the following gaunt and ghastly, grotesque and 
graphic passage occurs, and which, moreover, is char- 
acteristic and to our immediate point. 

"In a word, while so many Benthamism?, Socialisms, Fourrierisms, pro- 
fessing to have no soul, ^o staggering and lowing like monstrous moon- 
calves, the product of a heavy-laden moon struck age; and in this same 
baleful 'twelfth hour of the night' even galvanic Pu«eyisms, as we say, 
are visible, and dancings of the sheeted dead, — shall not any voice of a 
living man be welcome to us, even because it is alive 7'' 

That the disciples of Bentham, and Robert Owen and 
Fourrier, should be accused of professing to have no 
soul, because their main object has been to ameliorate 
the bodily condition of mankind ; or that an indifference 
to poetry and the fine arts, except as light amusements, 
to be taken alternately with gymnastics and foot-ball. 



THOMAS CARLYLE. 337 

«Tiould be construed into a denial of the existence of 
such things, we do not consider fair dealing. True, 
they all think of first providing for the body ; and, look- 
ing around at the enormous amount of human suffering 
from physical causes, it is no great wonder that they 
chiefly devote their efforts to that amelioration. A man 
who is starving, is not in a fit state for poetry, nor even 
for prayer. Neither is a man fit for prayer, who is 
diseased, or ragged, or unclean — except ihe 07ie prayer 
for that very amelioration which the abused philoso- 
phers of the body seek to obtain for him. With respect, 
however, to the disciples of Bentham, Owen, and Four- 
rier, it is no wonder that he should be at utter variance. 
No great amount of love " is lost between them." Not 
that Carlyle read^ or knows much of their systems; 
and not that they read or know anything of his writings. 
In these natural antipathies all philosophers are in an 
equal state of unreasonableness. Or shall we rather 
call it wisdom, to follow the strong instincts of nature, 
without any prevaricating reasonings upon the in-felt 
fact. Carlyle could make little good out of their sys- 
tems, if he read them ; and they could make nothing at 
all of his writings. The opposite parties might force 
themselves to meet gravely, with hard lines of the 
efforts of understanding in tlieir faces, and all manner 
of professions of dispassionate investigation and mutu- 
al love of truth — and they would clash foreheads at the 
first step, and part in fury! "The Body is the first 
thing to be helped!" cry the Benthamites, Owenites, 
Fourrierites, — loudly echoed by Lord Ellenborough and 
the Bishop of London — "Get more Soul!" cries Car- 
lyle, " and help yourselves !" 

" But the wants of the body will win the day — the 
movements of the present age show that plainly. The 
immortal soul can well afford to wait till its case is 
repaired. The death-groans of humanity must first be 
humanely silenced. More Soul, do we crave for the 
world 1 The world has long had a sphere full of unused 
Soul in it, before Christ, and since. If Plato, and Soc- 
rates, and Michael Angelo and Raphael, and Shaks- 
pere and Milton, and Handel and Haydn, and all the 
great poeis, philosophers, and music-magicians, that 
have left their Souls among us, have still rendered us 
no protection against starvation, or the disease and 
damage of the senses and brain by reason of want of 
Ff 



338 THOMAS CARLYLE. 

food, in God's name let us now think a little of the Bo- 
(3y — the mortal case and medium of his Image. What 
should we think of a philosopher who went to one of 
our manufacturing towns where the operatives work 
from sixteen to eighteen hours a-day, and are neverthe- 
less badly clothed, dirty, and without sufficient food, — - 
and to whom the philosopher, as a remedial measure, 
suggested that they should get more soul. Many at 
this hour are slowly, or rapidly, dying from want. Can 
we tell them to think of their souls-? No — give the fire 
some more fuel, and then expect more light, and the 
warmth of an aspiring flame. That these two extremes 
of body and soul philosophy, may, as Emerson declares, 
involve one and the same principle, viz., the welfare 
and progress of mankind, may be true ; but at pres- 
ent the poor principle is " between two stools" — or be- 
tween the horns of a dilemma not inaptly represented 
by Mr. Carlyle's misapplied figure of the staggering 
moon-calf. 

We have observed that Carlyle is not an originator; 
and although he is a man of genius and original mind, 
and although he has knocked out his window m the 
wall of his century — and we know it, — we must repeat 
that, in a strict sense, he is not an originator. Perhaps, 
our figure of the window might have been more cor- 
rectly stated as the re-opening of an old window, long 
bricked up or encrusted over, — and probably this man 
of a strong mallet, and sufficient right hand, thought 
the recovery of the old window, a better and more glo- 
rious achievement, than the making of many new win- 
dows. His office certainly is not to " exchange new 
lamps for old ones." His quality of a " gold-reviver"^ 
is the nearest to a novel acquirement. He tells us 
what we knew, but had forgotten, or refused to remem- 
ber ; and his reiterations startle and astonish us like 
informations. We "have souls," he 'tells us. Who 
doubted it in the nineteenth century ; yet who thought 
of it in the roar of the steam-engine "? He tells us that 
work is every man's duly. Who doubted that among 
the factory masters ? — or among the charity children,, 
when spelling from the catec'hism of the naiional 
church, that they will "do their duty in the state of 
life to which it shall please God to call them ?" Yet 
how deep and like a new sound, do the words " soul,'* 
* work," *' duty," strike down upon the flashing anvils, 



THOMAS CARLYLE. 339 

of the age, till the whole age vibrates ! And again he 
tells us, " Have faith."" Why, did we net know that we 
■must have " faith V Is there a religious teacher in the 
land who does not repeat from God's revelation, year 
by year, day by day — Have faith"? or is there a quaek 
in the land who does not call to his assistance the 
energy of " faith V And again — " Truth is a good 
thing." Is that new? Is it not written in the theories 
of the moralist, and of the child ? — yes, and in the moral 
code of Parliament men, and other honourable gentle- 
men, side by side with bribery and corruption, and the 
" melancholy necessity" of the duellist's pistol and 
twelve paces? Yet we thrill at the words, as if some 
new thunder of divine instruction ruffled the starry air, 
— as if an angel's foot sounded down it, step by step, 
coming with a message. 

Thus it is obvious that Mr. Carlyle is not an origina- 
tor, but a renewer, although his medium is highly ori- 
ginal; and it remains to us to recognise that he is none 
the less important teacher on that account, and that 
there was none the less necessity for his teaching. 
*'The great fire-heart," as he calls it, of human nature 
may burn too long without stirring ; burn inwardly, cake 
outwardly, and sink deeply into its own ashes: and to 
emancipate the flame clearly and brightly, it is neces- 
sary to stir it up strongly from the lowest bar. To do 
this, by whatever form of creation and illustration, is 
the aim and end of all poetry of a high order, — this,-— 
to resume human nature from its beginning, and return 
to first principles of thought and first elements of feel- 
ing ; this, — to dissolve from eye and ear the film of hab- 
it and convention, and open a free passage for beauty 
and truth, to gush in upon unencrusted perceptive fac- 
ulties : for poetry like religion should make a man a 
child again in purity and unadulterated perceptivity. 

No poet yearns more earnestly to make the iinier 
life shine out, than does Carlyle. No poet regrets more 
sorrowfully, with a look across the crowded and crush- 
ing intellects of the world, — that the dust risiig up from 
men's energies, should have blmded them to the bright- 
ness of their instincts, — and that understanding (accor- 
ding to the German view) should take precedence of a 
yet more spiritualized faculty. He is reproached with 
not being practical. " Mr. Carlyle," they say, "is not 
practical." But he is practical for many intents of the 



340 THOMAS CARLYLE. 

inner life, and teaches well the Doing of Being. " What 
would he make of usV say the complainers. " He re- 
proaches us with the necessities of the age, lie taunts 
us with the very progress of time, his requirements are 
so impossible that they make us despair of the repub- 
lic." And this is true. If we were to give him a sc p- 
tre, and cry " Rule over us," nothing could exceed the 
dumb, motionless, confounded figure he would stand : 
his first words on recovering himself, would be, " Ye 
have souls ! work — believe." He would not know 
what else to think, or say for us, and not at all what 
to do with us. He would pluck, absently, at the scep- 
tre, for the wool of the fillet to which his hands were 
accustomed ; for he is no king, except in his own pecu- 
liar sense of a prophet and priest-king, — and a vague 
prophet, be it understood. His recurrence to first prin- 
ciples and elements of action, is in fact, so constant 
and passionate, that his attention is not free for the 
development of actions. The hand is the gnomon by 
which he judges of the soul ; and little cares he for the 
hand otherwise than as a spirit-index. He will not 
wash your hands for you, be sure, however he may 
moralise on their blackness. Whether he writes his- 
tory, or philosophy, or criticism, his perpetual appeal 
is to those common elements of humanity which it is 
his object to cast into relief and light. His work on 
the French Revolution is a great poem with this same 
object; — a return upon the life of humanity, and nni' 
eliciting of the pure material and initial element of life, 
out of the fire and torment of it. The work has fitly- 
been called graphical and picturesque ; but it is so ht/ 
force o/6ei??o- philosophical and poetical. For instance,, 
where the writer says that " Marat was in a cradle like 
the rest of us," it is no touch of rhetoric, though it 
may seem so, but a resumption of the philosophy of 
the whole work. Life suggests to him the cradle, the 
grave, and eternity, with scarce a step between. In 
that brief interval he sometimes exhorts that you should 
work ; and sometimes it would appear as if he exhorted 
you not to work at all, but to fit still and think. He is 
dazzled by the continual contemplation of a soul beat- 
ing its tiny wings amidst the pale vapours of Infinity. 
Why, such a tnan (not speaking it irreverently) is not 
fit to live. He is only fiit to be vv'here his soul most 
aims at. He sinks our corporal condition, with all its 



THOMAS CARLYLE. 341 

wants, and says, " Be a man !" A doad-man with a 
promoted spinl seems our only chance in this philoso- 

Carlyle has a great power of re-production, and can 
bring back his mnn from the grave of years, not Hke a 
ghost, but, witli all his vital flesh as well as his thoughts 
about him. The reproduced man thinks, feels, and 
acts like himself at his most characteristic climnx — and 
the next instant the Magician pitches him into Eternity, 
saying, *' It all comes to that." But his power over 
the man, while he lasts, is entire, and the individual is 
almost always dealt with as in time-present. His 
scenes of by- gone years, are all acted now, before your 
eyes. By contrast Carlyle often displays truth ; from 
the assimilations in the world, he v»'rings the product 
of the differences ; and by that masterly method of in- 
dividualising persons, which is remarkable in his his- 
torical writing, the reader sometimes attains what Car- 
lyle himself seems to abhor, viz., a broad generaliza- 
tion of principles. His great forte and chief practice is 
individualization. And when he casts his living heart 
into an old monk's diary, and, with the full warm 
-gradual throbs of genius and power, throws out the 
cowled head into a glory : the reason is not, as some 
disquieted readers have hinted, that Mr, Carlyle regrets 
the cloistral ages and defunct superstitions, — the reason 
is not, that Mr. Carlyle is too poetical to be philosophi- 
cal, but that he is so poetical as to be philosophical in 
essence when treating of things. The reason is, that 
Mr. Carlyle recognizes, in a manner that no mere his- 
torian ever does, but as the true poet always will do, — 
the same human nature through every cycle of indi- 
vidual and social existence. He is a poet also, by his 
insight iuto the activity of moral causes working through 
the intellectual agencies of the mind. He is also a 
poet in the mode. He conducts his argument with no 
philosophical arrangements and marshalling of " for 
and against ;" his paragraphs come and go as they 
please. He procefjds, like a poet, rather by analogy 
and subtle association than by uses of logic. His illus- 
trations not only Illustrate, but bear a part in the rea- 
soning; — ihe images standing out, like grand and beau- 
tiful caryatides, to sustain the heights o7 the argument 
Of his language we have spoken. Somewhat too slow, 
broken up. and involved "for eloquence, and too indi- 
Ff2 



342 THOMAS CARLYLE. 

vidual to be classical, it is yet the language of a gifted 
painter and poet, the colour of whose soul eats itself 
into the words. And magnificent are the splendours 
they display, even as the glooms. Equally apt are 
they for the sad liveries of pain and distress, and cer- 
tainly for the rich motleys of the humorous grotesque. 
His pictures and conjurings-up of this latter kind — 
chiefly from his original faculty, and method of produ- 
cing the thing alive and before you, but also by contrast 
with his usual thoughtful, ardent, and exacting style — 
are inexpressibly ludicrous. His Latin epitaph on Count 
Zahdarm, in " Sartor Resartus," and his account of the 
courtier whose lower habiliments were stuffed with 
bran, to look broad and fashionable, but who unfortu- 
nately sat down upon a nail, are exquisite. These 
things are often additionally ludicrous from his giving 
the actors a dry, historical shape, while the scene itself 
is utterly absurd and extravagant, but amidst which the 
narrator seldom appears to move a muscle of his face. 
It is by reason of this humorous dryness that we some- 
times do not know if he would really have us laugh at 
the thing. 

Moreover, it must be stated, that the Prophet of the 
Circle hath displayed a cloven tongue ! — and peradven- 
ture the sincerity of his mode of expression in several 
works may at times have been questionable. The 
most orthodox dogmatists have often applauded his 
sayings about a Church, when it has been plain to the 
initiated readers of his books that he meant no such 
templ.e as that, but some untithed field, with a soul in 
it. Jn like manner, in his remarks on tolerance in his 
*' Hero-worship," he seems to guard himself strongly 
against imputations of latitudinarianism ; whereby the 
highly orthodox commend him as very proper, and the 
latitudinarians laugh in their sleeves — he does it so 
well. It is the same in politics. Radicalism is snoffed 
at ; and the next page lets loose a sweeping radical 
principle, involving perhaps no sm.all destructiveness 
for its attainment. On the other side, Tories are grati- 
fied by his declarations of reverence for old things, 
though they may be placed, in order to be the better 
seen, upon the top of Vesuvius ; and the more assimila- 
tive and shapely Conservative smiles to hear him speak 
aloud for the conservation of all things which are good 
and excellent. The book on " Past and Present," how- 



THOMAS CARLYLE. 343 

ever, settles most of these doubts. It i-s all over with 
him among the high church party ; and he laughs as he 
thinks. But have any of the other parties got him? 
Not so: he was born to be an independent Thinker; it 
is his true mission ; it is the best thing he can do, and 
we have no doubt but it is just the thing he will do. 

We think "Sartor Resartus" the finest of Mr. Car- 
iyle's works in conception, and as a whole. In execu- 
tion he is always great; and for graphic vigour and 
quantity of suggestive thought, matchless : but the idea, 
in this book, of uncovering the world — taking off all 
the clothes — the cloaks and outsides — is admirable. His 
finest work, as matter of political philosophy, is un- 
doubtedly his " Past and Present." In this work he is 
no longer the philosopher of the circle. He allows the 
world a chance. 

The incentive to progression in the great family of 
mankind, is usually considered to be the desire for hap- 
piness, or the prospect of beUering our condition by 
struggling onward to a given point: but the necessity 
of progression, as well as the incentive, are perhaps 
equally attributable to another cause. It may be that 
Dissatisfaction is the great mover; and that this feeling 
is implanted as a restless agent to act for ever upon us, 
so as to urge us onward for ever in our ascending cycles 
of being. This we should conceive to be Mr. Carlyle's 
impression. He does not say so, we believe ; nor per- 
haps does he decidedly think so ; nevertheless we 
should say the Philosophy of Dissatisfaction formed a 
principal element in his many-sided unsystematic view 
of the struggles of mortality. 

The book entitled " Chartism" was a recognition of 
this principle of dissatisfaction, as manifested by the 
violent mental and physical forces of a number of en- 
raged sufferers. But we pass through the book as 
through a journey of many ways and many objects, 
brilliantly illuminated and pictured in every direction, 
but without arriving at any clear conclusion, and with- 
out gathering any fresh infortn-ation on the main sub- 
ject, duiing the progress. By his not very clear argu- 
ment aboui " might" and " right," he has enabled any 
despot to show some sort of reasoning for any violent 
act. 

His grand remedial proposals for all the evils of the 
country, by " Universal Education" and " General Emi-. 



344 THOMAS CARLYLE. 

gration," are rather an evasion of Chartism and its cau- 
ses ; for the Chartists say, " We have enough education 
to see the injustice of people being starved in a land of 
plenty ; and as for emigration, we do not choose to go. 
Go yourselves." 

" Past and Present" evidences a perception of greater 
wants than these Education and Emigration plans. 

"True, nil turns on yo\ir Ready Reckoner bein^ moderately correct, — be- 
ing not insupporiably incorrect ! A Ready Reckoner which lias led to dis- 
tinct entries in your Ledger such as these: — ' Creditor, to English i>eople, 
Ijv fif.een hundred years of good labour; and Debtor in lodging in enchant- 
ed Poor-Law Bastilles : Creditor by conquering the largest Empire the Sun 
ever saw ; and Debtor to Donothingism and ' Impossible,' v^ ritten on all 
the departments of the government thereof: Creditor by niounfiins of gold 
ingots earned ; and Debtor to the Bread purchasable by them •' s%ich Ready 
Reckcner, methinks, is beginning to be suspect; nay, is ceasing, and has 
ce ised, lo be suspect ! Such Ready-Reckoner is ;i Solecism in Eastcheap : 
and must, whatever he the press of business, and will and shall be rectifie<l 
a liitle ! Business can go on no longer with itJ" — Past and Present, p. 220. 

'I'he " History of the French Revolution," is con- 
sidered by most people to be Mr, Carlyle's greatest 
work ; not as a history, we presume, nor because it is in 
three volumes, but chiefly because it is thought to con- 
tain a more abundant and varied display of his powers 
than any of his other works. We can offer no remarks 
about it so good as those we shall extract from an ar- 
ticle written by Joseph Mazzini,* which we consider to 
be one of the most profound, masterly, and earnest- 
minded critical .essays that was ever written. We 
should also add, that it is full of that admiration and 
respect which are due to a writer of Mr. Carlyle's ge- 
nius and character. 

"By that Revolution the spirit of emancipation became incarnate in a peo- 
ple, and gave battle ; and the battle was long, bloody, destructive, full of 
^reatand cruel tilings, of Titan-like phrenzies and achievements. * * * * 
Have extinct geneiations nothing more to yield lis than an emotion of 
pity? ***** The historian has a noble and great mission; 
but it is not by making us weep over all that falls ; it is not by placing 
before us, fragment by fragment, detail by detail, the mere material fact, 
the succession of crises by which this world of the detid, with their im- 
mediate effects, have parsed away ; — above ail, it is not by dragging forth, 
at every instant, from the midst oP this collective and complex world, the 
single wretched and feeble individual, and set'ing him in presence of the 
profound ' mystery of time,' before ' unf ithomable darkness,' to terrify hira 
with the enigma of cxi-tence — it is not so that this mission can be fultilled. 
* * * * Before our eye?, as before his, in the midst of a kind of phas- 
tasmngoiial vnrtex, c.-sp ^bje of giving the strongest head a dizziness, pass in 
speedy flight the defunct heroes of the poem. What are they going to do ? 
We know not: the poet expl lins them not, but he Innents over them all, 
whoever they m ly be. What have they done ? Where are they going ? 
We know not, but whatever they may have done, time has now devoured 
them, and onward they passover the slippery gore one after another, rolling 

* Monthly Chronicle, No. XXIII., Janv?ry 18-10. 



THOMAS CARLYLE. 345 

into night, the great night of Goethe, tlie bottomless and nameless abyss ; 
and the voice of tlie poet is heard crying to the loiterers, ' Rest not — con- 
tinue not — lorwaid to thy doom !' When all are gone, when escaped, as 
from the nightmiue ; out of the midst of the turmoil, you look around to 
catch some trace of their passage, to see if they have left aught behind 
them that can furnish the solution of the enigma, — you have only a vacuum. 
Three words alone remain as the summary of their history — the Bastille — 
the Constitution — the Guillotine. The Constitution, the object of every ef- 
fort, is placed between a prison and a scatibld. * * * * And is this 
all 1 There is another thing. Twenty-nine millions of beings rose not as 
one man, and the half of the population of Europe shook not at their ap- 
peal, for a word, a shadow, and empty formula. * * * * He has done 
no more than give us tab'cauj, wonderful in execution, but nothing in con- 
ception, without connection, without a bearing. His book is the French 
Revolution illustrated — illustrated by the hand of a master, we know, hut 
one from whom we expected a different labour. * * * * 'Phe eternal 
cursus et rccursus inexorably devours ideas, creeds, daring, and devoted- 
ness. The Infinite takes, to him, the form of Nihilation. It has a glance 
of pity for every act of enthusiasm, a smile, stamped with scepticism, for 
every act of great devotedness to ideas. Generalities are odious to it; (jptail 
is its favourite occupiition, and it there amuses itself as if seeking to lay at 
rest its inconsolable cares." 

We add the following, as being equally applicable to 
certain peculiarities in other works of Mr. Carlyle. 

"He has lost the sentiment of human grandeur; he has found himself 
placed between the infinite and the individual, catching at every instant 
from this contrast, a kind of terror of the former, and of pity, nothing more 
than pity, for the latter. So, having no higher value to give to the idea, he 
has been driven, in order not to exhaust himself at the very outset, to give 
so much the more to the impression : he becomes passive. Everything of 
a nature to strike vividly on the senses has been seized by him, and he has 
handed down the image to his readers. * * * * 

" It is to Goethe, too much revered by Mr. Carlyle, that we owe this tinge 
of irony which in this book often supervenes * * those traits of mock- 
ery * * above all, that disposition to cru^h man by contrasting him with 
the Infinite. As if it were not precisely from the consciousness of this In- 
finite environing him, and that yet prevents him not from arting, that man 
is great ;— as if the eternity that is before us, after us, and around us, were 
not also within us." — Mazzini. 

This unfair method of dealing with humanity, this 
continual disposition to place man at a disadvantage of 
the most extreme kind, viz.^ by comparison with space 
and time, and the miraculous round of things, consti- 
tutes a prominent feature in the philosophy of dissatis- 
faction. It is always sure of its blow, and its humiliat- 
ing superiority ; for who can stand before if ] We 
might quote to Mr. Carlyle the words addressed to 
Mephistopheles — " Seems' nothing ever right to you on 
earth '!" One cannot imagine anything done by human 
hands which would be likely to give Mr. Carlyle much 
satisfaction. He would be pretty sure to sny, at best, 
" Work on, and we shall see what else will come of 
it!" Or, more probably, to quote again from ' Faust," 
he would remind us that " Man must err, till he has 



346 THOMAS CARLYLE. 

ceased to struggle.'" Hence he would have us sit quiet- 
,ly and be silent. He applauds inactivity and silence; 
but he also applauds work: he says man must work, 
and exhorts every one to do his utmost. These con- 
tradictions, however, have a central meaning, which 
we shall attempt to explain. The dissatisfaction, the 
ainhopefiilness, and the melancholy that pervades his 
■works are attributable to the same causes. 

For the practical dissatisfaction exhibited in Mr. Car- 
lyle's works, we would offer the following elucidation. 
We think that he so continually negatives the value of 
work, denies the use and good of doing things, and smiles 
bitterly or laughs outright at human endeavour, because 
he considers that so long as the Competitive system — 
the much applauded " fair competition" — be the rule of 
social working life, instead of Co-operation, there can 
be made no actual step in advance to a better condition 
of things. So long as one class, whether in trade, 
politics, art, or literature, is always striving to oppose, 
pull back, counteract, or plunder the other, no perma- 
nent good can supervene. The greatest remedial meas- 
ure which is sure to let in an overflowing stream of 
good, he laughs at, — because, after all the long labours 
of the contest for it, he sees in imagination a number 
of side-trenches cut to let it off before it reaches the 
assumed destination, or means taken to let it off after 
its arrival, by other channels. By the terms " hero" 
and " heroic," he means true wisdom and moral 
strength ; and the only hope he sees for this world, is 
that one man should rule over each country, eminent 
for his heroic worth, because chosen by a people who 
have at length become themselves not un-heroic, and 
therefore capable of knowing true greatness, and of 
choosing their greatest man. 

So much for his practical and political dissatisfaction. 
For his contradictory tone concerning all work, as una- 
vailing and yet a necessity, let him answer for himself: 

"Tlius, like a God-created, fire-breathing, spirit-host, we emerge from the 
Inane ; haste stormfully across the astonished earth ; then phin^'e asiain into 
the Inane. Earth's mountains ;ire levelled, and her seas filled up, in our 
passiifie: can the earth, which is but dead and a vision, resist spirits which 
have reality and are alive 1 On the hardest adamant, some foot-print of us 
is stamped in ; the last Rear of the host will read traces of the earliest Van. 
But whence? O, heaven, whither? Sense knows not; Faith knows not; 
only that it is through Mystery to Mystery, from God to God. 
' We are suck stuff 

As dreams are made of, and our little Life 

Is i;oaad£d. with a sleep.' " 



THOMA.S CARLYLE. 347 

A familiar illustration sometimes helps a philosophi- 
cal difficulty. The following story, which is highly 
characteristic of the parties, and is nevertheless of a 
kind that may be told without violating the trustfulness 
of private intercourse, will very well answer our pre- 
sent purpose. Leigh Hunt and Carlyle were once pre- 
sent among a small party of equally well-known men. 
It chanced that the conversation rested with these 
two — both first-rate talkers, and the others sat well 
pleased to listen. Leigh Hunt had said something about 
the Islands of the Blest, or El Dorado, or the Millenni- 
um, and was flowing on in his bright and hopeful way, 
when Carlyle dropt some heavy tree-trunk across 
Hunt's pleasant stream, and banked it up with philosoph- 
ical doubts and objections at every interval of the 
speaker's joyous progress. But the unmitigated Hunt 
never ceased his overflowing anticipations, nor the sat- 
urnine Carlyle his infinite demurs to those finite flour- 
ishings. The hsteners laughed and applauded by turns ; 
and had now fairly pitted them against each other, as 
the philosopher of Hopefulness and of the Unhopeful. 
The contest continued with all that ready wit and phil- 
osophy, that mixture of pleasantry and profundity, that 
extensive knowledge of books and character, with their 
ready application in argument or illustration, and that 
perfect ease and good nature, which distingui.sh each of 
these men. The opponents were so well matched that 
it was quite clear the contest would never come to an 
end. But the night was far advanced, and the party 
broke up. They all sallied forth; and leaving the close 
room, the candles and the arguments behind them, sud- 
denly found themselves in presence of a most brilliant 
star-light night. They all looked up. " Now," thought 
Hunt, "■ Carlyle's done for! — he can have no answer to 
that !" " There!" shouted Hunt, " look up there ! look 
at that glorious harmony, that sings with infinite voices 
an eternal song of hope in the soul of man." Carlyle 
looked up. They all remained silent to hear what he 
would say. They began to think he was silenced at lant — 
he was a mortal man. But out of that silence came a 
few low- toned words, in abroad Scotch accent. And. 
who, on earth, could have anticipated what the voice 

said! "Eh! it's a 5ac? sight!" Hunt sat down on a 

stone step. They all laughed — then looked very 
thoughtful. Had the finite measured itself with infini- 



348 THOMAS CARLYLE. 

ty, instead of surrendering itself up to the influence 1 
Again they laugiied — then bade each other good night, 
and betook themselves homeward with slow and serious 
pace. There might be some reason for sadness, too. 
That brilliant firujament probably contained infinite 
worlds, each full of struggling and snfTering beings — of 
beings who had to die — for life in the stars implies that 
those bright worlds should also be full of graves; but 
all that Ufe, like ours, knowing not whence it came, 
nor whither it goeth, and the brilliant Universe in its 
great Movement having, perhaps, no more certain 
■knowledge of itself, nor of its ultimate destination, than 
hath one of the suffering specks that compose this 
small spot we inherit. 



HENRY TAYLOR 



THE AUTHOR OF "FESTUS." 

"Hand in hand at wisdom's shrine, 

Beauty with Truth I strive to join. 

And grave Assent with glad Applause; 

To pMint tlie story of the soul. 

And Plato's vision to controul 

By Verulamian laws!" — Akensidk. 

*'But as we, in onr isle imprisoned. 
Where cattle only, and divers dogs are bred, 
The precious unicorns, strange monsters call, — 
So thought he sweets strange, that had none at all." 

Donne. Elegy i^ 

"Great thoughts, like great deeds, need 
No trumpet. ***** 
But set thyself about it, as the sea 
About earth, lashing at it day and night ; 
And leave the stamp of thine own soul in it, 
As thorough as the fossil flower in clay." 

.^dditwnal Scene to " F^stus." 

"Yea, copyists shall die, spark out and out. 
Minds which Combine and Make, alone can tell 
The bearings snd the workings of all things 
In and upon each other." — Ibid. 

The unrepressed vigour of imagination, — and the 
graceful display of philosophical thought ; the splendour 
of great and original imagery, — and the level dignity of 
the operations of the understanding; the passion of 
poetry, — and the sound sense of poetry ; are proposed 
to be discussed in this essay. The calm philosophy of 
poetry, in its addresses to the understanding and the 
domestic affections, now holds the ascendancy ; but as 
the fresh and energetic spirit of the present age ad- 
vances, a contest is certain to take place in the fields 
of Literature on the above questions. The sooner, 
therefore, the battle is fought out, the better; and to 
this end, the poetical antagonisiiis shall at once be 
brought into collision. Several of the parties being per- 
sonal friends, they will not be so much surprised at this 
summary ciy "lo arms," as that very large portion of 
Gg 



350 HENRY TAYLOR AND 

the public who fancy that the periods of poetry are all 
over with us in England. 

A peculiar principle, and a peculiar style, are the first 
things to be considered in this business. If the absence 
of enthusiasm, or the total subjugation of it by the in- 
tellect ; and if the absence of a power to call up imagery, 
or- the levelling down of imagery to a barren regularity, 
be now considered as the true principle and style for 
the greatest poetry, then all our great poets of by-gone 
ages, have written in error, and must no longer be ac- 
counted great, except in the light of barbarians, even 
as Pope and Dr. Johnson regarded the men of the 
Elizabethan age. But this will never be admitted again, 
for the public mind has outgrown all such teaching. 
The attempt, therefore, seems to be to bring back the 
same impression or opinion, without verbally stating it, 
— and, by n)aking an exception in favour of Shakspere, 
to merge all the glories of his poetical contemporaries 
in a generalized idea of extravagance and disorder. 

Most readers will recollect that Wordsworth has pre- 
fixed to his beautiful poem, " To the Daisy," some lines 
from Withers, which either originated or encouraged 
in him the principle by which the descriptive part of his 
poetry is so peculiarly influenced: — 

" That from every thinw I saw 
I could Fome instruction draw. 
And raise pleasure to the height. 
Through the meanest objecl's sight," &c.— WiTHKRa. 

The disposition to misuse an extreme principle has 
for some time been perceptible. The great poet Words- 
worth has said how much to his mind was " the mean- 
est flower that blows." No doubt but it was much to 
him; and no doubt there is nothing mean, essentially, 
in nature. But when a number of other poets say — 
"Well, and the meanest flower is just as much to us V 
— we cannot believe that they are sincere, for the ori- 
ginal impression is not theirs, and no one, by mere im- 
itation, can have "thoughts that lie top deep for tears." 
The universal application of a sentiment cannot imply 
a universal sensibility. (It should here be understood 
that we are not at present alluding to either of the gen- 
tlemen at the head of this paper, but speaking in gener- 
al terms.) But out of this same "following" has been 
derived a notion that the more mean and insignificant a 
subject, or object, is in itself, the more fit and worthy 



THE AUTHOR. OF " FESTUS." 351 

is the opportunity for a poet to make it great by uplift- 
ing and surrounding it with his own personal feelings 
and thoughts. To all this we say — " Leave the great 
poet his originality." His best teachings should be 
received, bui his experience should not be imitated or 
assumed. Nor will the principle bear it any further 
than he has carried it without manifest injury to our 
literature. With Burns the daisy was a " wee, modest, 
crimson-tippit flower ;" — with Wordsworth it has "a 
function Apostolical." The small celandine, or common, 
pilewort, Wordsworth calls a " Prophet of delight and 
mirth." That in his enlarged and pecuhar sense of 
these things, the terms are admissible, we very well 
know ; but we should not be prompt to respect any 
other poet who declared that to him the daisy was like 
any apostle, or that he could discover anything prophe- 
tic of mirih in the suiall celandine ! It was so, to Words- 
worth : it is not so to many of his followers. 

The steady, classical, and perspicuous style of the 
accomplished author of *' Philip van Artevelde" is much 
to be admired. He, and a few others, have rightly un- 
derstood the true meaning of simplicity, as matter of 
style. The word, however, has become injurious by 
the notion that has been created from it, and very much, 
by Mr. Taylor's assistance, that all splendour of image- 
ry is mere redundancy; and this notion has hence be- 
come a sort of excuse for the pride of natural barren- 
ness. 

Now, for our own individual taste, however, we free- 
ly declare that we like something more " audible and 
full of vent," and are not without apprehension that an 
€xclusive devotion to the idea of simplicity may gradu- 
ally induce baldness into our poetical literature. There 
is coming among us a cant about simplicity, as though, 
the means of greatness were the end. " Nothing (as 
an ingenious gentleman recently said in a monthly pe- 
riodical) can be more simple than 'Give me a pot of 
beer!'" — yet nobody would pretend that this was gran- 
deur." To say this would be like the assertion o-f Lord 
Peter, in excuse for feeding his poor brothers upon 
nothing but bread. " Bread (said Lord Peter) is the 
staff of life. Bread comprises within itself the essence 
of beef, and mutton, and veal, and partridge, and pheas- 
ant, and woodcock, and grouse, and quail, and plum- 
pudding, and custard." This will not do ; the beauty 



352 HENRY TAYLOR AND 

and the power of passion and imagination, simply ear- 
pressed^ is the great point to aim at ; and yet by no means 
lo tiie exclusion of such images and phrases as sponta- 
neously arise out of those great elements, and are in 
such cases their most natural interpreters. For a de- 
monstration of the above position, if not thought self- 
evi(^ent, we can only refer to the practice of the great- 
est epic, dramatic, and lyric poets. 

" So then," it may be said, " your are for the choice 
of great subjects, and a great style; and not for the 
meanest things, and simplicity 1" That would be the 
taunting form of the proposition, and would convey a 
false inference besides. Not in that mode are princi- 
ples of Art to be discussed. We are for an unexclusive 
choice in good subjects, and we are for a suitable style 
to each. But we are anxious to see poets create and 
design subjects in which their own individuality shall 
be merged ; and that it should be well understood that 
true simplicity does not refer to puerilities or a barren 
style, but primitive emotions, and a clear and concise 
form of expression. 

The reader will perhaps recollect, or turn to, the re- 
marks (p. 214) on Mr. Macaulay's position, that to write, 
or even to enjoy, poetry of the highest class, involves 
a certain degree of " unsoundness of mind." We hope 
it has there been shown how much the notion amounts 
to ; and that no songs of " battle, murder, and sudden 
death," can be called the perfection of right reason, 
merely because the slayers are ancient Romans. Mac- 
aulay is a man of undoubtedly great and most soimd 
understanding — but "how about these Lays'? — for he 
cannot be sound and unsound V 

In Mr. Taylor's preface to "Philip van Artevelde,'' 
he propounds his philosophy of poetry with that clear- 
ness of expression and gentleman-like courtesy in dif- 
fering, which are characteristic of him. Yet we think 
that besides certain indefensible opinions and assertions, 
he has not fully met the question. With his strictures 
on Lord Byron we agree in the main. Byron was cer- 
tainly a better constructor, and a more practical and 
generally intelligible artist than Shelley, though his 
imagination was far inferior to that of Shelley. Still, 
it cannot be rightly inferred because Shelley's imagina- 
tion carried him away, often into regions where his ge- 
nius could neither act, nor whence it could return to 



THE AUTHOR OF " FESTUS." 353 

earth, but was lost in the bright Immfnsity, thai there- 
fore poets ought to make all imagination subservient to 
the reasoning faculty, and what is called ''good sense," 
or that it should be reduced to the condition of a bal- 
anced level, and its natural images be shorn and shaven 
to baldness. "Suppose I were to say," says Dr. Bnr- 
ney, *• Well — I have been to Italy — seen the Venus, the 
Apollo, and many fine things, — but, after all, give nie a 
good, plain barber's block." 

Mr. Henry Taylor would no doubt say that he did not 
mean this ; but we fear his argument would amount to 
something like it, and at any rate is calculated to pro- 
duce such an impression, and inculcate a hard dry taste 
in the public mind. Mr. Taylor argues for poets obtain- 
ing a fine balance of the faculties (devoutly to be de- 
sired, of course), and regards "good sense" as '"one of 
the most essential constituents of genius" — which it un- 
doubtedly is, philosophicnlly understood ; and undoubt- 
edly is not^ in the conventional meaning of ttie term, as 
he uses it. These arguments, therefore, must rather 
be regarded as pretexts for depressing the tone of all 
modern poetry, moderating passion at the very outset, 
and stunting the growth of imagination by never suffer- 
ing it to rise beyond the calm level of reason and com- 
mon sense. 

There must be something peculiarly undramatic in 
the mind that could conceive and execute a dramatic 
subject in so lengthy a form as to comprise the same 
number of lines as six plays, each of the ordinary length. 
In this philosophical poem we may find a prolonged 
illustration of Mr. Taylor's principles of poetry and the 
drama. A dramatic poet, without passion ; — what does 
that amount to ] A romantic poet, without any romance 
in him ; — what does that amount tol A contemplative 
poet, without a heaven of ideality above his head ; — 
%vhat does that amount to? A rhythmical writer, and 
teacher, who denies the distinct element of poetry as 
poetry. 

Yet a distinct element it assuredly has. Poetry, 
though made up of other things, is yet as much an en- 
tire thing as any of the substantive faculties of the mind, 
each of which is made up of the other faculties. For 
there is no such thing as pure reason, pure imagination, 
pure judgmen.t ; — but each helps the other, and of neces- 
sity. Still, we admit a distinct faculty of each. In 
Gg2 



354 HENRY TAYLOR AND 

like manner do we claim a distinct existence for poe- 
try. 

Should we think it fitting- that our legislators deliver- 
ed statesmanlike and eloquent orations in Parliament 
with a musical accompaniment ; or our philosophers 
lectured in recitative^ The arguments of Mr. Taylor 
lead us directly to the question of why he does not write 
in prose? Certainly "Philip van Artevelde" would 
have been as dramatic and roinantic in prose as in its 
present form, its rhythm appears unnecessary, and he 
evidently feels it. After writing a romance in about ten 
thousand lines of verse, which ought to have been three 
volumes of elegant prose, he then composes a Preface 
to justify the proceeding. He says, " My critical views 
have rather resulted from composition than directed it.'* 
Finding he could rise no higher, he strives to show that 
rising higher would argue a loss "of the equipoise of 
reason." 

It may now be asked, — Are there any signs of ima- 
ginative vitality among living authors, independent of 
those old established reputations, the owners whereof 
are reposing upon their laurels? — are there any new 
men with whom abstract power and beauty are a pas- 
sion, and who possess the requisite faculties for their 
development? Are there, also, any signs of efforts, on 
their part, to revive or create a taste in the public for 
the higher classes of composition ? and if so, with what 
degree and prospect of success? These are surely very 
interesting quesiior.s — some of them easily answered, 
others open to considerable Jifficnlties and incertitude. 

Whatever may be the struggles — foolishly called all- 
absorbing — which are now transpiring in politics, in 
theology, and in the commercial world ; and however 
convinced each of the different parties may be that no- 
thing else can go right — nor that, indeed, any thing else 
can be properly attended to — till their particular cause 
is settled as they wish, — it is manifest that there is 
quite as great a siruL'gle coming on in literature, and in 
that very department which is most neglected by the 
public — we mean in poetry. The public does not see 
this; and as poetry is at present so unpopular, the 
critics do not see the struggle; but let anybody look at 
the persevering announcements of new poems in adver- 
tisements, and read a few of the poems of some hal.fr 
dozen of the best, and then the truth of our assertion 



THE AUTHOR OF " FESTUS 355 

will become apparent. The energetic spirit at work in 
various minds, and with different kinds and degrees of 
power, but still at work, not only without the slightest 
outward encouragements, but with all manner of oppo- 
sition in their path, and with the certain expenditure of 
time and worldly means upon their ''losing trame," 
must absolutely possess something genuine in its ele- 
ments, .and in its hopeful and indefatigable continuity. 

Imaginative and impassioned poetry has not been so 
uncommon among us as may have been thought. Those 
whom " it concerned" in nearly every instance dis- 
covered it, and welcomed it. Besides those who are 
already recognized, there have been, and are, others. 
Several of these little known, or unknovi'n, works we 
will mention. It is a service of abstract love; and we 
trust it will be received, not in a resentful, but a 
kindly spirit, by those who may now hear of them for 
the first time. One of the least known, published as 
long since as 1824, under the unpromising title of " Jo- 
seph and his Brethren," was full of the elements of true 
poetry, — in passion, imagination, and in thoughts result- 
ing from the reason and the understanding. It also dis- 
played great descriptive powers. The resemblaiice of 
the author's mind to that of P. J. Bailey, the author of 
" Festus," is extraordinary. As the writings of this 
latter poet are at present but little known (his work 
was only published four years since, and a true poet 
has little chance under ten or twelve), we ought per- 
haps to introduce him at once in an extract : — 

"We live in deeds, not years; in thoughts, not breaths; 
In feelings, not in figures on a dial. 
We should count time by heart-throbs. He most lives 
Who thinks most; feels the noblest; acts the best. 
And he whose heart beats quickest lives tiie longest : 
Lives in one hour more than in years do some 
Whose fot blood sleeps as it slips along their veins. 
Life is but a means unto an end ; that end, 
Beginning, mean and end to all things — God. 
The dead have all the glory of the world.'' — Festus, p. 62-3. 

We should at once decline to argue with anybody 
who denied the poetry in the above passnge. The phi- 
losophy of the poem of " Festus" is to show the great 
ministry of evil as a purifier. But the spirit itself 
mowrns, not knowing its purpose. In the following, the 
Spirit of Evil speaks : — 

"The arrow knoweth not its end and aim. 
And I keep rushing, ruining along, 



356 HENRY TAYLOR AND 

Like a great river rich with tlead men's souls. 
For if I knew 1 might rejoice ; and that 
To me by nature is forbidden. I know 
Nor joy nor sorrow ; bnt a changeless tone 
Of sadness, like the night-wind's, is the strain 
Of what I have of feeling."— /iirf, p. 26. 

This poem abounds with equally fine passages, and 
in nearly every page. Such perfect instances of con- 
trast are the minds of Mr. Henry Taylor, and of the 
author of " Festus," that you cannot open the works of 
either, scarcely at any one page, which does not fur- 
nish a striking illustration of the passion of true poetry 
on the one hand, and the philosophical sense, and 
statesman-like self-possession of verse which should 
have been prose, on the other. 

Here is a passage from the "Additional Scene to 
Festus," on love, which Mr. Taylor will no doubt regard 
as the total loss of " the equipose of reason," as indeed 
it usually is, we suspect. 

" Festus. It is therefore that I love thee ; for, that when 
The fierj' perfection of the world, 
The sun, shall be a shadow, and burnt out, 
There is an impulse tow'rds eternity 
Raised by this moment's love." 

Instead of entering into any useless arguments on 
this point, we will at once give a love-scene from Mr. 
Taylor's work. 

Let us take an illustration of " reason" and " passion," 
as the two stand opposed in Mr. Taylor's mind. We 
will extract a portion of the scene in which Artevelde 
has, with much inlreaty and many flattering protesta- 
tions, won the consent of Elena to devote herself to 
him; — 

■Artevelde. "Tell me, sweet Elena, 

May I not hope, or rather can I hope, 
That for such brief and bounded space of time 
As are my days on earth, you'll yield yourself 
To love me living, and to mourn me dead." 

Elena is altogether a creature of impulse and emotion 
— an Italian, of great beauty and of high birth, but of 
wounded affection and blighted fame. She loves Arte- 
velde passionately, and his "proposals" (the usual 
worldly term suits well here) affect her deeply. As he 
presses her to give him up her heart, she replies ;— 

"I cannot — no — 
I cannot give you what you've had so long; 
Nor need I tell you what you know so well. 
I must be gone." 



THE AUTHOR OF *' FESTUS." 357 

and again ; — 

" No, let me go — I cannot tell — no — no — 
I want to be alone — 
Oh ! Artevelcie, for God's love let me go !" 

She leaves him with these words. The sequel proves 
that her love was deep and intense. She lives with him 
till the battle in which he was killed. She finds his 
body among the slain, kneels by it, embraces it, is dis- 
covered in this state, and when a French knight at- 
tempts to defend her from the charge of having been 
the paramour of the dead hero, she starts to her feet 
with the words, — 

"Thou liest, I was his paramour ;" 

thus glorying in her devotion. She revenges the in- 
sult offered to him, as he lies dead, by stabbing a man 
to the heart, and is herself killed in her resistance to a 
separation from his body. This closing scene is very 
ineffectively executed, and the situation being too 
strong for Mr. Taylor, he has painted it coarsely, and 
with an effect of bombast, the result of artificially striv- 
ing to supply the want of passion ; but it is detailed here 
to show that Elena had a passion for Artevelde. 

How then, to revert to their previous life, did he, cool 
and self-possessed, comport himself, when she, agitated 
with conflicting emotions, left him with the words, 
" Oh, Artevelde, for God's love let me go !" 

^'^ Artevelde (after a pause). The night is far advanced upon 
the morrow, 
And but for th.'.t conglomerated mass 
Of cloud with rajiged edges, like a mound 
Or black pine-forest on a mountain's top, 
Wherein the light lie« arabu^hed, diwn were near, — 
Yes. [have wasted half a svmmer's night. 
Was it well spent ! Successfully it wis. 
How little flattering is a woman's love ! — 
Worth to tlie heart, come how it may, a world ; 
Worth to mens measures of their own deserts. 
If weighed in wisdom's balance, merely nothing-.'' 

So that the pure gift of feeling which is worth a 
world to man's heart, is worth nothing in comparison 
with a much wiser thing — his vain glory ! Recovering 
himself, therefore, as quickly as he can, he calls one of 
his officers— enters upon business— and orders two men 
to be hanged ! 

Here then we find placed before us passion and rea- 
son ; or, at least, Mr. Taylor's idea of passion and rea- 
son. Tihe latter he exalts in his theory ; the former he 



35S IIE2JRY TAYLOR AND 

condemns as selfish and as vanity. Which is here the 
more selfish '^ Passion gives all, even to life itself. 
Reason wins all, and sneers at it. In the world's esti- 
mation this self possessed reason is of course the 
most ''respectable;" but which stands purest in the eye 
of God ? 

Several poems of the higher class of imaginative 
composition have appeared during the last ten years. 
In allusion to the learned and versatile author of the 
" Judgment of the Flood," and the " Descent into Hell," 
we could hardly do better than quote a couplet from 
the American poet, Cornelius Matthews — 

*'Thy heart-gates, mighty, open either way, — 
Come they to least, or go they forth to pray." 

The " Record of the Pyramids," by J. E. Reade, is 
another of those works in which the author has chosen 
a great subject, and had a high design in his mind. The 
execution in this case is unequal to the conception, ow- 
ing to the preservation of a certain philosophic calm, 
under circumstances when nothing but passion could 
have carried through such stupendous actions as are 
described, or induced full faith in the reader. But the 
respect and admiration due to an author who has always 
manifested such high and pure aims in art, ought al- 
ways to be gladly awarded. 

While treating of works of design, we should not be 
deterred from submitting a few remarks concerning 
*' Orion" (using the same privilege as Mr. Taylor and 
other authors, in their Introductions and Prefaces), but 
■want of space warns us to pass on to the works of oth- 
ers, which it is our duty to discuss in preference. 

" Vivia Perpeiua," by Sarah Flower Adams, is an 
example of an exalted subject, worthily wTought out, 
clear in design, skilful in construction. The characters 
are well drawn. The style a true example of simplici- 
ty. The ideas are more characterized by sweetness 
and pure religious emotion than by abstract imagination, 
either of beauty or power. Yet the power and beauty 
of impassioned reason (we commend the expression to 
Mr. Taylor's especial attention) are never absent, being 
personified in the principal character. Some of the sit- 
uations in which Vivia is placed, are highly dramatic. 
The foUovinng fine extract shows the noble Roman lady 
renouncing faith in the gods of her country. 



THE AUTHOR OF " FESTUS." 35^ 

TEMPLE OF JUPITER OLYMPUS. 

ViviA Perpktua at an altar burning before a statue of the god- 

ViviA. Lo! where all trembling, I have knelt and pray'd; 
Where vow and sacrifice, at morn and eve. 
Shrouded in incense dim, have risen to appease 
The wrath, great Jove, of thy once dreaded thunder, — 
Up to the might of thy majestic brows. 
Yet lerrible with anger, thus I utter, — 
I am no longer worshipper of thine! 
Witness the firm farewell these steadfast eyes 
For ever 'grave upon thy marble front ; 
Witness these hands — their trembling is not fear — 
That on thine altar set for evermore 
A firm renouncing seal — I am a Cliristian ! 
Where are thy lightnings ? — where thine awful thunder t 
Melted from out thy grasp by love and peace I 
* * * * 

The shadows blacken, and the altar flame 
Troubles them into motion. God of stone, 
For the last time, farewell ! 

Vivia Pcrpetua, Act II., Sc. 4. 

The character of Vivia Perpetua in the hands of her 
regenerator from the honoured dust of by-gone ages, 
stands dramatically entire and intact; but she has also 
by suggestion a spiritual connection with all those who, 
in any age, struggle towards the light, proclaiming the 
truth that is in them, and suffer with her a martyrdom 
in the scorn and injuries of the world. It is a poeni 
for the future, as well as the past. It is a great subject, 
worthily executed, although it would probably bear con^^ 
siderable abbreviation. 

Mr. Taylor's acquaintance with the poetry of his time 
appears to be either very limited, or else we must un- 
derstand him to denounce all poetry except that which 
is adapted to his own peculiar nature and taste. He 
actually concludes his observations on Lord Byron, 
which are sufficiently disparaging, by the following- 
statement: — " Nor can it be said that anything better, 
or indeed anything half so good, has been subsequently 
produced. The poetry of the day, whilst it is greatii^ 
inferior in quality, continues to be like his in kind T* 
And this, with Alfred Tennyson alive in the world, at 
whom, indeed, the rest of the paragraph seems to poinfe 
directly. 

We would also commend to Mr. Taylor's discom- 
posed attention, the poems of " Paracelsus" and of 
*' Festus," were it only that he might endeavour lo 
discover the likeness to Lord Byron. 'I'hey are as un- 
like, by the presence of the finer qualities of imagina> 



360 HENRY TAYLOR AND 

tion, as " Philip van Arteveld" is unlike by the absence 
of passion. 

Whatever greatness has originated in Wordsworth's 
mind from his habit of refusing " to share any glory 
with his subject" by the systematic selection of things 
devoid of much obvious interest in themselves, and, as 
lie often declares, on account of their meanness, to the 
eye, or to the general impressions of mankind, it is 
much to be doubted if the adoption of this principle ly 
others will not lead them downwards in the scale of 
enthusiasm. It may tend to throw them exclusively 
upon their individualities, which may not inaptly be rep- 
resented by a paraphrase of a well-known couplet, — 

" My Thought is great because the object's mean : 
Then 'twould be greater were no object seen." 

We are fully aware how open every argument of this 
kind will be to misrepresentation. Nevertheless we 
shall speak it out, and trust to having justice in the long 
run. It is such poems as Wordsworth's " Laodamia," — 
the scriptural grandeur of simplicity in " Michael," — 
the high-wrought fervour of his immortal " Ode," and 
not his illustrations of " the meanest objects," that all 
lovers of poetry so deeply admire, and that his disci- 
ples should regard as stars to guide them. 

It is much to be lamented by all those who are seri- 
ously interested in works of art, that the power of con- 
ception should by no means necessarily include the 
power of design and construction, nor do even these 
always insure a worthily executive hand. A singular 
example of great capacities in execution with a deplor- 
able inability to build up a fabric, was exhibited some 
few years since, in a half-epic, half-lyrical poem, pri- 
vately circulated, entitled, " Ernest, or Political Regen- 
eration," which was reviewed in one of the leading 
quarterlies, we forget which. A passage from it will 
be of good application to some remarks previously made 
•with reference to the inseparable nature of Imagination 
from all poems of large scope, and from poetry itself, 
which is a radiant Passion no less than an art : — 

"The glorious sun, that sate alone 
WhilH yet creation was a child ; 
Is sovereign still npf)n his throne ! 
Undinnned, undarkeneil, undefiied, 
They watch and wheel, those mighty spheres, 
Slill ru<!liing round him at his will ; 
Through boundless space and countless years, 



THE AUTHOR OF "fESTUS.'* 361 

And he doth list their music still. 

And ever onward as they roll. 

He cheers them with his quickening ray." 

Ernest, p. 250. 

Of the subject of " Festus," we have already spoken. 
The build of its design is so obviously taken from 
Goethe's " Faust," whatever differences may also exist, 
that we can but regard it as so far unworthy of the 
striking originality of the materials of passion, thought, 
and imagination, comprised in its structure. The exe- 
cution breathes throughout a fulness of power. That 
the work often runs wild, is admissible ; and besides 
redundancies, it also has many violations of taste. 

But, however great a conception may be, however 
splendid the imagination, the modern artist can never 
be too earnestly exhorted to think well of his design, 
and the construction in all its parts. Why should he 
fail, as so many do, in these things ? Let us endeavour, 
in a few concluding words, to make our meaning clear 
to all whom it may concern. 

There burns in the elements of certain natures, in 
the secret wells of their being, the deep sources where 
dwelleth the soul, a yearning towards some vaster 
region than the world which surrounds them, and an 
aspiration which would cleave its crystalline walls and 
soar away towards illimitable heavens, unknown ecsta- 
sies, and the eternal mysteries of Divinity. They feel 
this yearning, this aspiration, communicating itself to 
the very temperature and current of their blood; it 
stings them to the quick of inward being; it breaks out 
in drops upon the forehead, and rills down this poor 
inadequate, corporeal frame. They have mighty 
thoughts and deep; the deep thoughts often cross 
each other, and re-cross in their tumultuous lights and 
shades, till the man is vanquished by the over-forces 
of his own mind : they see mighty phantasies and 
shapes ; and the vision and the image rule over the 
man. Does he dream ? No, he wakes ; he has awak- 
ened to more things than his fellows. Is he mad, or 
of intellect unsound'? Not so ; for he sees clearly and 
knows that his mystery is but some excess in the com- 
mon mystery of all life, and that he is but a troubled 
human creature ; a frame-work troubled by some re- 
bounding and imprisoned spirit within, that seeks for 
freedom in the illimitable air and in the illinntable light, 
not as a mere wild voyage to regions where he would 



362 HENRY TAYLOR AND 

be altogether strange and confounded, but as though by 
a sense of birth-right in these intolerable desires. But 
Time moves on — the wheels of the years pass over the 
head and face turned star-ward, — and the man finds 
that he will assuredly be, some day, old. He is but 
where he was when he first commenced this upward- 
looking, these aspirations to infinity. His thoughts 
now slowly recoil and revolve inwardly, and his visions 
gather closer round him. He seeks a sublime result 
for that within, which is denied to him from without. 
He places the images of his mind in order, even as a 
man before the death of his mortality arraigneth his 
house : and finally he is no longer vanquished by his 
thoughts, but fixes and rules over the vision and the 
dream. Here then he finds some solace for his yearn- 
ings ; he no longer seeks to disperse himself, but to 
collect ; no longer to revel in the arms of bright and un- 
attainable desires, but to build. And the condition of 
this man's mind is that of Creative Passion. 

But to the store-house of the world, and to the things 
of worth for man's largest use and benefit, his soul's 
sake and body's sake, of what value is this creative 
passion? Can it take us up into the blessed air beside 
it, or help us to ride with it triumphant upon the trium- 
phant winds? Or can it come down to us on earth, and 
if so, with what benefit to those who need help ? How 
shall we perceive and feel it? How know it, how take 
it to heart and use it, as an incentive to hope, a refuge 
for sorrow, or an influence to elevate, and a medium to 
bring good tidings to mankind ? Of what value to us 
shall be a palace of mighty voices, and echoes from 
mightier worlds, if we have no fair entrance porch, or 
if, having entered, we cannot distinguish the passages 
and step-flights from the pillars and the walls, nor the 
right shape of anything, nor the clear interpretation of 
any voice or echo 1 

Out of these wild imaginations, these ungoverned 
and formless phantasies, these outrages to common 
sense, which heated brains call genius or inspiration, 
we must seek to free ourselves. Should we not call 
in the aid of calm reason? Must we not command all 
the-e passionate emotions and imaginings by erecting 
a glacier in the midst, at the summit of which Sound 
Sense shall sit upon his judgment throne ? 

There sits Sound Sense upon his throne ! He is at 



THE AUTHOR OF " FESTUS. 363 

the same aliitude as those fantastic dreams and fiery 
emotions which he is to govern. Yet a Httle while he 
sits ; not haughtily, but with a sober pride. And be- 
hold ! — his throne is sinking — it surely is sinking I — the 
crowned Perfection is sinking lower and lower — the 
glacier is dissolving at the base — the passions are 
cruelly hot — the summit of his glacier has now dropt 
flat — his grave long face gapes wide, and out of that 
widening dismay a grey mist issues, amidst which that 
very miscalculating presumption is diffused and lost. 

Are we again upon earth'? We are safely there, 
though the descending mist is there also. Nviy, but 
Sound Sense is a good thing when upon earth. Let us 
all be reconciled. For out of the mist we now see a 
man emerge — an actual, living piece of humanity. He 
is a Working Man and may help us in this matter. 

He hath a rough beard, and a strong, well-knit, sup- 
ple body ; a large organic forehead, and a steady eye. 
in one hand he holds a chisel, in the other a lump of 
clay. A modeller and a mason, a designer and a build- 
er is this working man. He would speak to us. Shall 
we hear him ? Or shall he be dumb, and go on with his 
fAvn work? Will the Spirit of the Age listen to an un- 
known, unlaurelled labourer] Well, — let him say what 
he thinks. 

" The first thing for the making of a house is the 
definite impulse to have a house made. The second 
thing is to have imagination to conceive of the design. 
And the third thing is to have a good workman's hand." 

All this is common, plain-spoken stuff which every 
body knew before. Why should a man who makes 
things, presume to tell us how things are made? But 
let hitn proceed for the chance of something better. 

"The definite impulse is a passion for that thing; the 
imagination is the power to think the shape; and the 
hand is the power to make the shape of the thought. 
You must listen, or depart. For now I will go on. 
The passion of the heart commands the passion of the 
brain, when the heart is of the right strength as meant 
by God for a natural, true man ; and in those heart-felt 
emotions doth God's voice speak — the only inspiration 
of genius, because a revelation from the Infinite Maker 
to the finite maker who devoutly conceives these 
things, and aspires to make them manifest to his broth- 
ers of the earth. If a man have no passion he can 



364 HENRY TAYLOR AND 

have no true impulse to create any thing. If he have 
passion, what he designs will then be in accordance and 
proportion with what he imagines ; and lastly, what he 
imagines can only receive due form and be intelligible 
to fitting eyes, by mastery of hand." 

*'This shapeless lump of clay, so unsightly, so cold, 
and unsuggestive, is the type of all substance whereon 
no work has been done. Breathe fire into it — give to 
it a soul, and it shall have high capacities ; set an ar- 
tist's hand to work upon it, and it may have an angel's 
form. All the great imaginings, all the splendid visions 
that spring up in the mind, or can be created by volun- 
tary power, will exercise no good influence in the 
world, nor have a long date, unless they be wrought 
upon a clear design, and are built up into a suitable 
structure. Nay, thoughts themselves, howsoever lofty 
or profound, must have intelligible form. The spirit 
of philosophy and of art, may comprehend the abstrac- 
tions, and the germinating ideas as they exist in the 
work-places of the brain ; but even these practised 
spirits understand the things better when they have 
acquired some definite shape, visible within, if not with- 
out ; while for the use and benefit of mankind at large 
no labour is available that hath not intelligible form." 

"As generations advance in civilization and refine- 
ment, a polish comes over the surface of nature, so 
that an artist that works with a light hand, shall find 
his tool's edge turned, and his labours produce no effect. 
In these days the people need power. They talk of 
knowledge, but must first be made to feel truth, and 
desire it. Among the relics of ancient Egypt there is 
a colossal granite Fist ; sole memory of a forgotten god. 
Four thousand years have those granite fingers been 
held close. They did their work — and were locked up. 
It was that power which reared the pyramids — which 
gave them their structure, their form, and their eternity. 
They could not have lasted as rude shapeless heaps. 
They could not have endured the elements; man could 
not have borne the sight of them. Imagine that mighty 
fragment of a limb to open out into a Hand ! A good 
change has come among some nations, and will grad- 
ually develope itself through all nations, — the change 
of feeling and conviction in the estimate of power. 
True power is now seen to arise from the nobler pas- 
sions of the heart and of the intellect. Use, then, that 



THE AUTHOR OF ''fESTUS." 365 

mighty open Hand with moral aim, and build for truth 
a lofty fabric." 

" Nothing will now be received which has not some 
distinct principle, a clear design, a shapely structure. 
Characters, passions, thought, action and event, must 
mU be wiihin a circle and citadel of their own, bounded 
by no hard line of horizon, and opening large portals on 
ail sides to the influences and sympathies of the outer 
world. The only artist-work that does good in its day, 
or that reaches posterity, is the work of a Soul that 
gives Form. But without the impassioned life of that 
soul, the best-reasoned form and structure are but cold 
vanities, which leave man's untired nature just where 
they found it, and therefore are of no service on earth." 



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Sallust. Translated by William Pose, 
M.A. With Improvements. ISmo. 

Ciesar. Translated by William Dun 
can. 2 vols. 18mo. Portrait. 

Thncydides. Translated by Williani 
Smith, A.M. 2 vols. ISmo. Portrait. 

Livy. Translated by George Baker,^ 
A.M. 5 vois. I8nio. Portrait. 

Herodotus. Translated by the Rev, 
William Beloe. 3 vols. ISmo. Por- 
trait. 



History of New-York. 
Dunlap. 2vols. 18mo. 



By William 
Engravings. 



The History of the American Theatre. 
By William Dunlap. 6vo. 

Discourses and Addresses on Subjects 
of American History, Arts, and Lit- 
erature. By Gulian C. Verplanck. 
12m.o. 

History of Priestcraft in all Ages and 
Countries. Bv William Hovvitt. 
12mo. 

The Condition of Greece. By CoL J. P. 

Miller. 12mo. 

Full Annals of the Revolution )n 
France, 1830. To which is added a 
particular Account of the Celebration 
of said Revolution in the City of Nev/- 



BIOGRAPHY. 



York, on t.lie 25th November, 1830. 
By Myer Moses. 12mo. 
Talcs from American History. By the 
Autlior of " American Popular Les- 
soa.s." 3 vols. 18mo. Engravings. 

Uncle Philip's Conversations with the 
Children about the History of Virgin- 
ia. ISino. Engravings. 

Uncle Philip's Conversations with the 
Children about the History of New- 
York. 2 vols. Idmo. Engravings 

Uncle Philip's Conversations with the 



Children about the History of IVTassa- 
chuselta. 2 vols. 18mo. Engravings. 

Uncle Philip's Conversations with the 
Children about the History of Sew- 
Hampshire. 2 vols. ISmo. Engra« 

VlllgS. 

Tales of the American Revolution. By 
B. B. Thatcher, Esq. ISmo. 

Lost Greenland ; or, Uncle Phllip'« 
Conversations with the Children 
about the Lost Colonies of Oreen- 
land. ISmo. With Engravings. 



BIOGRAPHY. 



The Martyrs of Science ; or, the Lives i 
of Galileo, Tycho Urahe, and Kepler. 
By Sir David Brewster, K.H. ISino. 

Life of Rev. .John Summerfield. By 
Holland, Esq. With additional 
Selections from his Correspondence. 
Edited by Rev. Daniel Smith. 8vo. 

J.ilBRAltY OF AMEI'.IOAN BiOGUAPHY. 

EditPd by Jared Sparks, Esq. 10 

vols. 12mo. Portraits. 

Vol. I. contains Life of John Stark, 
by E. Everett.— Life of Ch<irles 
Brockden Brown, by W. H. Pres- 
cott.— Life ol Richard Montgomery, 
by .lohn Armstrong.— Life of Etliaii 
Allen, by .lared Sparks. 

Vol. II. Life of Alexander Wilson, by 
Wm. B. O. Peabody.— Life of Cap- 
tain .John Smith, by George S. llil- 
liard. 

Vol. III. Life and Treason of Benedict 
Arnold, by .I.ired Sparks. 

Vol. IV. Life of Anthony Wayne, by 
John Armstrong. — Life of Sir Hen- 
ry Vane, by C. W. Upham. 

Vol. V. Life of John Eli.ot, the Apostle 
of the In lians, by Convers Franc-is. 

Vol. VI. Lifeof William Pinkney,by 
Henry Wheaton.— Life of William 
EUery, by E. T. Channing.— Life 
of Cotton Mather, by Win. B. O. 
Peabodv. 

Vol VII."Lifeof Sir William Phips, 
by Francis Bowen. — Life of Israel 
Putnam, by Wm. B. O. Peabody.— 
Memoir of Lucreiia Maria David- 
son, h/ Miss Sedgwick. — Life of 
David Riiten house, by James Ren- 
wick. 

Vol. Vlil. Lifeof Jonathan Edwards, 
by Samuel Miller. — Life of David 
Brainenl, by Wm. B. O. Peabody. 

Vol. IX. Liie of Baroa Steuben, by 



Francis Bowen. — Life of Sebastian 
Cabot, by Charles Hay ward, Jr — 
Life of William Eaton, by Corne- 
lius C. Fellon. 

Vol. X. Life of Robert Fulton, by J. 
Renwick.— Life of Henry Hudson, 
by Henry R. Cleveland —Life ot 
Joseph Warren, by Alexander H. 
Everett. — Life of Father Mar- 
quette, by Jared Sparks. 
Lives of Jay and Hamilton. By James 

Renwick. 18mo. Portrait. 

The Life of De V^itt Clinton. By 
James Renwick, LL.D. 18mo. Por- 
trait. 

Life of Commodore Oliver H. Perry. 
By Lieut. A. Slidell M.ickenzie, Au 
thor of '' A Year in Spain," «&c. 
2 vols. 18mo. Portrait- 

A Fvife of Washington. By J. K. 
Paulding, Esq. 2 vols. ISmo. En- 
gravings. 

The Life and Works of Dr. FrankMn 
New ICdition. 2 vols. 18mo. With, 
a Portrait on steel. 

The Pursuit of Knowledge under Diffi 
culties ; its Pleasures and Rewards. 
Illustra'.ed by Memoirs of Eminent 
Men. 2 vols. 18mo. 

The Life and Travels of Mungo Park. 
With the Substance of later Discov- 
eries relative to his lamented Fate 
and the Termination of the Niger. 
18mo. Engravings. 

The Life and Works of Dr. Johnsoiu 
By the Rev. Wm. P. Page. 2 vols. 
18mo. Portrait. 

Distinguished Men of Modern Tinnes. 
2 vols. 18mo. 

The Life and Works of Dr Oliver 
Goldsmith. By Washington Irving 
2 vo;.s. 18ma. Portrait. 



BIOGRAPHY. 



Plutarch's Lives. Translated from the 
original Greek, with Notes, critical 
and historical, and a Life (>:' Plutarch. 
Bj' John Langhorne, D.D., and Wil- 
liam Langhorne, A.M. A new Edi- 
tion, carefully revised and corrected. 
In one volume 8vo. With Plates. 
Sheep e.\tra. 

Tm same work in 4 elegant 12mo vol- 
umes, large type. Sheep e.xtra. 

Letters and Journals of Lord Byron. 
Willi Notices of lii.s Life. By 'i'houi- 
as Moore, Esq. 2 vols. 8vo. With 
a Portrait. Slieep. 

Memoirs of Aaron Burr. With Mis- 
cellaneous Selections from his Cor- 
respondence. By Matthew L. Davis. 
2 vols. 8vo. Portraits. 

Private Journal of Aaron Burr, during 
his Residence in Europe, with Selec- 
tions from his Corresponde^ice. Ed- 
ited by M. L. Davis. 2 vols. 8vo. 

Memoirs of the Life and Correspond- 
ence of Mrs. Hannah More. By Wil- 
liam Roberts, Esq. 2 vols. 12mo. 
Portrait. 

Lives of the Signers of the Declaration 
of Independence. By N. Dwight. 
P2mo. 

The Life and Adventures of Bruce, the 
African Traveller. By Major Sir 
Francis B. Head, ISmo. Portrait. 

The Life and Death of Lord Edward 
Fitzgerald. By Thomas Moore. 2 
vols. 12mo. 

"^raits of the Tea-Party ; being a Me- | 
moir of George R. T. Hewes, one of 
the Last uf its Survivers. With a 
History of that Transaction; Remin- ! 
iscences of the Massacre and the 
Siege, and other Stories of Old Times 
By a Bostonian. ISmo. Portrait. 

Wonderful Characters ; comprising 
Meaioirs and Anecdotes of the most 
remarkable Persons of every Age and 
Nation. By Henry Wilson. 8vo. 
Engravings. 

The Life of .John Jay; with Selections 
from his Correspondence and Miscel- 
laneous Papers. By his Son, William 
Jay. 2 vols. 8vo. Portrait. 

h Memoir of the Life of William Liv- 
ing8t®n. Member of Congress in 
1774,1775 and 177G; Delegate to the 
Federal Convention in 1787, and Gov- 
ernor o( the State ol New-J( rsey from 



1776 to 1790. With Extracts from 
his Correspondence, and Notices of 
various Members of his Family. By 
T. Sedgwick, Jr. 8vo. Portrait. 

Sketches of the Life and Character of 
the Rev. LeiTiuel Haynes. A.M. By 
Timothy Mather Cooley, D.D. With, 
some Introductory Kemarks by Wm. 
B. Sprague, D.D. 12mo. Portrait. 

Memoirs of the Duchess d'.\brantba 
(Madame Juiiot). 8vo. Portrait. 

Records of my Life. By John Taylor, 
Author of '• Monsieur Tonson." *8vo. 

Memoirs of Lucien Bonaparte (Prince 
ofCanino). 12mo. 

The Life and Remains of Edward Dan- 
iel Clarke. By the Rev. William 
Otter, A.M., F.L.S. 8vo. 

The History of Virgil A. Stewart, and 
his Adventures in capturing and ex 
posing the Great " Western Land. 
Pirate" and his Gang, in Connexion 
with the Evidence; also of the Tri- 
als, Confessions, and Execution of a 
Number of Murrell's Associates in 
the State of Mississippi during the 
Summer of 1835, and the Execution 
of five professional Gamblers by the 
Citizens of Vicksburg, on the 6ih oi 
July, 18.55. Compiled by H. R. How- 
ard. 12ino. 

The Religious Opinions and CharacteF 
of Washington. By Rev. E. C. 
M'Guire. 12mo. 

Lives of the Necromancers ; or, an Ac- 
count of the most Eminent Persons 
in successive Ages, who have claim- 
ed for themselves, or to whom haa 
been imputed by others, the Kxercise 
of Magical Power. By Wi'lliam Go-i- 
win. 12mo. 

A Life of George Washington la 
Latin Prose. By Francis Glass, 
A.M., of Ohio. Edited l.y J. N. Rey- 
nolds. 12mo. Portrait. 

Life of Edmimd Kean. By Barry 
Cornwall. i2mo. 

Life of Mrs. Siddons. By Thomas 
Campbell. 12mo. With a Portrait 

The Life of Wiclif, By Charles Webb 
Le Bas, A.M. 18mo. Portrait. 

The Life of Archbishop Cranmer. By 
Charles Webb Le Bas, A.M. 2 voi%, 
ISmo. Portrait. 

5 



BIOGRAPHY. 



littlber and the Lutheran Reformation. 
Bj the Rev. John Stolt, A.M. 2 vols. 
18mo. Poriraiis. 

The Life of A ndrew .Jackson, President 
of the United Slates of Airierica. By 
William CobbettjM. P. l8mo. With 
a Portrait. 

Matthias and his Impostures : or, the 
Progress of Fanaticism. Illustrated 
in the Extraordmary Case of Uotiert 
Matthews and some of his Forerun- 
ners and Disciples. By William L. 
Stone. 18mo. 

Sketches and Eccentricities of Colonel 
David Crockett. 12mo. 

Anect'oles of Sir Walter Scott. By the 
Eitrick Shepherd. With a Life of 
the Author, by 6. Dewitt Blood^ood, 
Esq. 12mo. 

The Life of Baron Cuvier. By Mrs. 
Lee. I2ino. 

The Life, Character, and Literary La- 
bours of Samuel Drew, A.M. 15yhis 
eldest f^on. 12mo. 

My Imprisonments: Memoirs of Silvio 
Pellico da Saluzzo. Translated from 
the Italian. By Thomas Roscoe. 
12mo. 

The Life of Napoleon Bonaparte. By 
J. G. Lockhart, Esq. 2 vols. 18mo. 
Portraits. 

The Life of Nelson. By Robert Sou- 
they, LL.D. 18irio. Portrait. 

The Life and Actions of Alexander the 
Great. By the Rev. J. Williams. 
ISmo. Map. 

The Life of Lord Byron. By John 
Gait, Esq. ISmo. 

The Life of Mohammed, Founder of the 
BelisjiOM of Lslam. and of the Empire 
of the Sanicens. Bv ili« Uev. Georjie 
Bush, of New- York. 18mo. With 
Engravings. 

The Life and Times of George the 
Fourth. With Anecdotes of distm- 
guished Persons of the last Fifty 
Years. Uy Rev. George Croly. 
18nno. 

Lives of the most eminent Painters and 
Sculptors. By Allan Cunningham, 
Esi, 5 vols' 18mo. Portraits.— 



Tbe Life of Mary, Queen of Scots. By 

6i5 



Hetiry Glassford Bell, Esq. 2 ▼oi*. 
16mo. Portrait. 

Life of Sir Isaac Newton. By Sit 
David Brewster, K.B., LL.D., F.R.S. 
18mo. Engravings. 

Memoirs of the Empress Josephine 
By .lohn S. Memes, LL.D. 18mo, 
Portraits. 

The Court and Camp of Bonaparte, 
Ibmo. Portrait. 

Lives and Voyages of Drake, Caven- 
dish, and Dampier. Including ati 
Introductory View of the earlier Dis- 
coveries in the South Seas, and the 
History of the Bucaniers. 18mo. 
Portraits. 

Memoirs of Celebrated Female Sove- 
reigns. By Mrs. Jameson. 2 vols. 
18mo. 

Lives of Celebrated Travellers. By 
James Augustus t^t. John. 3 vols. 
18mn. 

Life of Frederick the Second, King of 
Prussia, by Lord Dover. 2 vols. 
18iiiO. Portrait. 

Indian Biography ; or, an Historical 
Account of those Individuals who 
have been distinguished ^mong the 
North American Natives as Orators, 
Warriors, Statesmen, and other Re- 
markable Characters. By B. B. 
Thatcher, Esq. 2 vols. 18mo. Por- 
trait. 

Hislory of Charlemagne. To which is 
prefi.xed an Introduciion, comprising 
the History of France from the ear- 
liest Period to the Birth of Charle- 
magne. By G. P. R. James. 18mo. 
Portrait. 

The Life of Oliver Cromwell. By the 
Rev. ]M. Russell, LL D. 2 vols. 
18mo. Portrait. 

Memoir of the Life of Peter the Great. 
By John Barrow, Esq. 18mo. Por- 
trait. 

Lives of (he Apostles and Early Mar- 
tyrs of the Church. 18mo. Engra- 
vings. 

Sketches of the Lives of Distinguished 
Females. Written for Young Ladies, 
wiih a View to iheir Menial and 
Moral Improvement. By an Amer- 
ican Lady. 18mo. Poitrait, &c. 



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